


I Am Lost and Found

by Casteaowl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cas and Dean are both too stubborn for their own good, Community: deancasbigbang, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2014, Emotionally Repressed Dean, Happy Ending, M/M, No Smut, Sad Castiel, canon divergent after 8x23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casteaowl/pseuds/Casteaowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Castiel had been forced to explain to a human what it felt like for an angel to suddenly become human, he might have likened it to having most of your limbs and senses violently ripped away or dulled, and then being thrown into the middle of a large city during the busiest hour of the day. After meeting the Winchesters he devoted a little more exploration to the idea, but no amount of apocalypses or time spent watching humanity could adequately prepare him for actually being one hundred percent human. When Metatron stole his grace and sent him to Earth, he quickly realized how wrong he was in his perception of humanity. The Winchesters take him in, but the person he could always count on most to help him isn’t exactly helping, leaving him with few options. But their family, broken as it is, always manages to pull through, somehow or another. A story in which Dean finally realizes what he means to Cas, and what Cas means to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came into existence partly because the bitter Cas!girl side of me was upset by Cas’ poor treatment in the show (both relating to and separate from his relationship with Dean), and partly because I had to change my original idea twice and needed something that I could do quickly (or so I thought). I was also upset by the lack Cas actually dealing with being human (both physically and mentally because fucking peeing doesn’t count) and lack of communication between Dean and Cas and wanted to fix that, since they’ve got a lot of issues they need to talk about that have been building since season 6. Dean, in particular, never really got a chance to see Cas’ side. So that’s what I wanted to do with this fic: give Dean a chance to see Castiel’s perspective. This story is not in any way intended to throw all the blame on Dean. Cas has his fair share of faults too. Really, both of these idiots just need to talk it out. I think both of them are too stubborn to just sit down and have a heart-to-heart without putting up a fight, so I figured this might be a good way for them to get everything on the table, so to speak. This is also my first time writing Dean and Castiel. I’ve only really written things for my own original story before, and so far I’ve never written anything this long before. So hopefully I’ve done okay. Please feel free to let me know how I've done in the comments, and tell me what you liked/what you think needs work, or anything else.  
> Anyway, this is my first time participating in the DCBB, but I had a lot of fun with this, and though the work isn't perfect, I'm still proud of the result. Thank you very much to my amazing artist, [XLostLoonaX](http://xlostloonax.livejournal.com/). The art they did is gorgeous and helps the story come alive. This is the link to all the art, so please check it out: [Art Masterpost](http://xlostloonax.livejournal.com/13031.html)  
> Also, thank you to my amazing beta, [smallhorizons](http://smallhorizons.tumblr.com)! Thank you for your hard work too!  
> Important: This work is still in the process of being edited a little, because of computer troubles that involved me losing a whole day's worth of editing (though I think I've fixed most of it). I would advise waiting a few days before reading. I'll make another note once I finish redoing all the editing I lost. Thank you for your patience! Also, since this is my first work, I'll probably continue to make changes as I receive comments, so like I said, feel free to make suggestions.  
> (I was originally supposed to post this on the 21st, but when I tried the post on livejournal didn't appear to go through, and then I discovered that this story seemed to disappear from the archive. Then when I tried to resubmit, I couldn't get the story to post again, and it has taken me an embarrassingly long amount of time to work out how to solve this. My apologies!)

The last thing he hears before darkness claims him is the screeching wail of an angel crying out in pain and terror.

 

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is darkness. He wakes with the echoes of his true voice still ringing in his ears.

 

The first thing he feels is emptiness. It doesn’t last long. Suddenly he’s aware of his heart, beating way too quickly, and his rapid breathing. He’s aware of the crushing weight that falls onto him, and his trembling limbs. And he’s aware of the vastness of the area around him, and how small and alone he suddenly feels. Then he can’t breathe, and it takes him a long time to calm himself down enough to focus.

Castiel has never given much thought to the idea of an angel becoming human. He has existed for a very long time, and it simply never happened enough to warrant much attention. In all his existence, he can think of very few other instances of fallen angels, and all the ones he knows about involved the angel choosing to rip their grace out and be reborn as a human, like Anna Milton. He supposes that now makes him somewhat of a special case.

 

Still, if he’d been forced to consider the unlikely situation where an angel transitioned from a multidimensional being of celestial intent to a mere human, while retaining all their angelic memories, Castiel might have thought that it would feel something like suddenly and violently losing all your senses and limbs and then being tossed mercilessly into the middle of a densely populated area, like a large city during the busiest part of the day. After meeting the Winchesters, and fighting against the apocalypse with them, he devoted a little more exploration to the idea. He had been falling, albeit a gradual fall, where his “mojo” had trickled away little by little. Granted, it was still fast in terms of an angelic lifespan, but it wasn’t instant. Even then, he’d never become fully human. He’d still been an angel, only he was basically powerless and cut off from the host. In any case, back then he’d been too focused on trying to find God and help the Winchesters stop the impending end of the world. With such high stakes, there was no time for much deep, existential thought.

 

Now, he has the displeasure of experiencing first-hand the abrupt change of species, and within minutes of having his grace stolen by Metatron—rendering him completely human—Castiel decides that he was wrong. He does feel severely out of his element, despite his recent years on earth and all the time he’d spent watching humanity, and it does feel like he’s been pushed into a throng of loud, fast-paced human city without adequate preparation. There is a great sense of loss, but surprisingly enough, he also feels like he’s gained something too, and that feeling perhaps outweighs the loss and emptiness. Humans are amazing, complex and resilient creatures. He knows this, and yet right now he does not feel like anything that he has gained is a good thing. It feels more like being blind and deaf all his life until one moment when those senses are suddenly available to him, without any warning. Rather than feeling the numbing cold and darkness of the void that he expected, he feels everything with a much greater intensity. He can no longer see the infrared light being given off by the stars and the fiery trails left by his siblings as they streak through the sky. But he can feel everything that he either did not feel as an angel, or could dull or mute at his convenience. An uncountable number of thoughts and emotions buzz around in his head as unknown sensations run through his body (and it is his body now, not a vessel), and he doesn’t even know where to start making sense of anything, or even how. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much. His mind is trying to do too much and he can’t process any of it.

 

He can still feel the meager remains of his dying grace, humming and pulsing weakly through him. That will fizzle out soon enough, and leave him with what? A human soul? Nothing? He clings on to the dregs of energy, hoping to memorize the feeling, or somehow keep a hold of the last part of what made him who he once was. He can hear the shrill screams of his brothers and sisters as their wings burn away and they plummet towards the Earth. It doesn’t help settle the chaos already going on in his head and he instinctively clutches at his temples in an effort to sooth the rapidly growing ache. He fights the urge to screw his eyes shut and welcome the darkness, and the only thing that keeps his eyes trained on the sky is the powerful feeling of guilt. This is his fault, so he deserves to at least suffer this pain and watch the destruction he caused. It will never be enough, but it’s all he can do for the moment.

 

He doesn’t know what he should do, and he can’t calm his mind enough to put together a coherent idea, so he stays rooted to the spot until long after the angels stop falling. The shrieks from what Dean refers to as “angel radio” die down, leaving a high-pitched murmur that is just marginally less painful. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, waiting for the warzone in his head to subside enough to somewhat function. He doesn’t know how long he waits. He doesn’t have the same perception of time that he had as an angel. When the violent fog clears away enough, his mind still feels sluggish and clouded, and he can’t keep up with everything that is racing through is head. He can barely even consider the idea of moving, much less muster the energy to actually do it, but he can’t stay here forever. He needs to move. There’s too much to do. He needs to figure out how to help the angels, though he knows it’s likely they won’t want his help. Sam and Dean probably don’t need his help, and it’s not like he’d be much use to them anyway, but he has to make sure they’re okay.

 

And so he pulls himself to his feet (when had he kneeled down?) and manages to focus enough to take in his surroundings. From the lack of artificial lighting, he assumes that he’s in a clearing, tucked deep in the middle of nowhere. Simply deducing that simple fact takes an embarrassingly long amount of time, and leaves Castiel overwhelmed and wishing he could just curl up into a ball on the ground and do nothing but wallow in guilt and self-pity. He won’t do that, though.

 

Moving is a good idea, regardless. Tremors run through his limbs, his body is slow and barely responsive, and he’s unsteady on his feet, but he moves. There is a thick line of trees in one direction, and he chooses to head away from the forest. Although the forest would provide a covering, it would also be easier for him to get lost now that he can’t instantly read his location. Staying hidden is important if he wants to stay alive, because he fully expects that at least some of his brothers and sisters will be angry with him, and rightly so. But he knows that he needs to help himself before he can help anyone else. If he can find a phone, he can at least call Sam or Dean, and that will be a start. Hopefully the direction he’s heading in will take him to civilization relatively soon.

 

He tries not to think any more than he has too, and lets himself run on base instinct. It’s all he can do at this point. Once he’s had time to get to some place relatively, he’ll examine the recent events in more detail and figure out what to do. If nothing else, he needs to be able to function with enough capacity to put together more than a string of mostly nonsensical thoughts.

 

So he walks, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

 

As he walks, the journey only gets harder. At first, he feels like his head is going to explode. Every color and sound and every smell and feeling are different from the way he would have processed them as an angel. He has more trouble distinguishing the trees from the background of the night sky. He can barely see what direction he’s going in, and it troubles him. When dawn starts to approach, the sound of birds chirping and the lightening sky makes his head hurt even more. He comes across a mother deer protectively leading her baby across his path and into the safety of the trees, and the sight touches him so much that it makes him want to cry. As he walks, he begins to feel completely detached from everything. It isn’t a good kind of detachment either. Not like the kind of separation he might feel as an angel possessing a vessel, where he could still sense certain things coming from his host but was able to filter it out. It makes him numb, listless, and very much out of touch with what’s going on around him. Later, he finds a dead baby bird, neck broken from a fall from its nest, and he can’t even feel proper sorrow for it. He simply stares at the little creature until he can force his feet to keep moving.

 

The detachment is better than the twisting sensation in his stomach, or the heaviness in his chest, or any of the other uncomfortable physical sensations that accompany the feelings. That in itself is bad enough, but even so he can deal with it, if it were his only problem. More troubling to handle are the multiple times that he’s caught himself totally shutting down and curling up on the ground, squeezing his eyes shut and screaming until he can muster the will to get up and go. Alternatively, sometimes it’s bad enough that he feels full of energy and can’t stay still even if he wants to. Those periods are preferable to Castiel. It keeps him moving, and that has to be better than remaining stationary. Sometimes he runs until he collapses and the screaming begins again.

 

Throughout it all, though, a headache pounds against his skull, and even in his periods of high activity he’s almost certain he’s not operating remotely close to an acceptable level, even by human standards. He considers himself lucky that he has any direction at all. He’s not dead, and he’s not lying prone in the middle of nowhere yet, which is an achievement in and of itself.

 

As time passes after the fall his mental status continues to fluctuate rather rapidly and confuse him. He still doesn’t know how long it’s been since he woke up in a dark field, just in time to see the sky light up with falling angels. Although he knows how to roughly estimate time and track the days by observing the sky, he hasn’t cared enough to pay much attention. The thought of counting the hours or the days never even occurred to him. As far as he’s concerned, there are more important things to worry about. He’s hardly even concerned about the state or needs of his body.

 

Every thought that passes through his brain is fleeting, gone before he can even begin to pick it apart and analyze it with careful attention.

 

_What happened to the other angels? Why does the ground feel so much harder and more unforgiving than it did earlier? How many of them died? Am I going in the right direction? It’s cold. Why is it so cold?_

_Will I survive long enough to help? It’s hot. The stars are too bright. Where will I go? They’re not bright enough._

 

It’s like he’s trying to retain too much and the human limitations of his being simply can’t contain or keep track of that much. As depressing as the possibility is, Castiel suspects there may be some truth to that possibility. Angels are vast, nearly limitless, as old as the universe itself. With the exception of the unknown number of memories that Naomi tampered with over the millennia, he remembers everything. Although the human mind can, in theory, hold an infinite amount of memories and knowledge, humans weren’t built to know what an angel knows. He doesn’t know what kinds of consequences occur as a result of cramming the entire existence of an angel into a human brain.

 

He feels like his whole body is harboring a violent ocean, and everything in his consciousness are tiny grains of sand that slip right through his fingers, washed away by the water, no matter how hard he tries to hold onto them. It’s a constant struggle to stay afloat and not be pulled down into the massive depths of the ocean.

 

One thought keeps coming back to him more than any other. _Dean._

_Dean. And Sam._

 

It’s probably one of the main things keeping him going, even subconsciously. He has to make sure they’re okay. He doesn’t know if Dean will want to see him, but he wants to see him anyway. Maybe it’s selfish, but he needs it, all the same. Before he does anything else, he needs to find his friends. If he can do that, then maybe he can actually worry about fixing everything else.

 

\--

 

A lifetime of hunting has taught Dean that when something bad happened, it usually means that more bad things will happen. The angels fell from heaven and he doesn’t know whether they have any angel juice left or not, Hell is still open for business minus the King (who remains at least partially a demon and locked up in their dungeon), and Cas isn’t responding to his prayers so he doesn’t know if the dude is even an angel anymore, or whether he’s a human, dead, or what. Not only that, but Sam was…

 

Sam is getting better. Slowly. But he is. Dean has checked five hundred thousand goddamn times, and he’s pretty sure that Sam isn’t dying right now. From what he can tell, Sam’s vitals seem to be getting better, or not getting worse, anyway. Which seems kind of unlikely considering the state his brother was in before starting the last trial and after later aborting the last trial. The fact that Sam might be recovering is more than a little strange. Good things just do not happen to Dean Winchester. But right now it’s a miracle that Dean will take without question for once. If Sam actually recovers, he’ll happily deal with the crappy terms and conditions hiding in the fine print later.

 

Dean heaves out a sigh that comes out sounding more like a growl and takes another quick gulp of Jack Daniels, straight from the bottle. He barely reacts to the burn of the alcohol going down his throat, a tolerance acquired from years of heavy drinking. The thought that he’s basically almost like a professional alcoholic passes through his mind, and that’s kind of depressing to think about, so he waves it away and carries on drinking. Within the last twenty-four hours alone, he’s had to deal with a lot of shit, and no one can tell him that he isn’t entitled to a fucking drink or two, or ten. He swishes the bottle, listening to the way the dark, amber liquid sloshes against the glass container. It’s nearly empty. Figures. He places the bottle back onto the table with a loud thunk, probably a little too roughly, but it doesn’t break so he doesn’t care. It’s been over three days since he’s slept any countable amount, not counting a couple power-naps here and there. There’s just too much to do, and too much to think about.

 

Resting on the table in front of him is a large, worn, leather-bound book with yellowing pages and a musty smell. Several more old books are set haphazardly over the table’s surface, in differing conditions and sizes, waiting to be looked through. The book he’s currently attempting to scan is heavy and thick enough to be used as a lethal weapon, and the print is so tiny that if it were any smaller it would be debatable whether there was really anything there at all. So far, it hasn’t even been terribly helpful, but it’s one of the few books that the Men of Letters had could be slightly useful for their current problems. It’s not like the old bastards ever had to deal with closing hell or angels falling out of the sky, but maybe they know something about healing weird supernaturally-induced illnesses. Plus, there’s not much else he can do, other than wear a path between the library and Sam’s room, and he needs to feel like he’s doing _something_ , or he’s liable to shoot something. So he dutifully goes back to flipping through the pages about angels and heaven and such, hoping that something relevant will pop out soon. Absolutely everything he reads reminds him of Cas, and that’s really not helping Dean’s already almost non-existent concentration levels right now.

 

There are literally hundreds of things he’d rather be doing than going through some obscure book written by some even more obscure dead guy who was probably more of a religious quack than a credible scholar. But Sam is likely to upset if he wakes up and finds out that Dean hasn’t even made an attempt to do anything productive while he was incapacitated. _Dean_ , he’d probably say while giving his best “I am very unimpressed with you” bitch-face. _We’ve got bigger problems to worry about. Hell’s probably a mess, Heaven just dumped all its angels to earth, and you’re still hovering over me?_

“You, uh, still haven’t heard from Cas yet, I take it?”

 

The sudden voice yanks him out of his thoughts. Dean snorts and rubs a hand over his face, feeling the rough two-day old stubble on his jaw as his palm dragged across it. He stares down at the book for another second with a small frown on his face before he finally gives up, shuts the book with a flip of his wrist, and pushes it back.

 

“Nope. The guy’s about as silent as it gets. He’ll either show up or he won’t.”

 

He turns to face the prophet and tries to keep his face void of any feeling that would be likely to require an emotional “talking it out” session (at least by Sam’s standards). Kevin’s standing in the entryway to the library, and Dean figures the kid probably looks as wrecked and on edge as he himself feels, judging from the unkempt hair, wide eyes complete with dark circles underneath, and the jittery stance. He can’t really blame him. He was alone, with no clue what was going on, when the angels began falling and some loud, obnoxious alarm started blaring in the bunker. Not to mention Crowley hadn’t been cured but they’d still brought him back to the bunker instead of killing him. Dean figured the kid probably had good reason to be pissed off too, though Dean didn’t regret making the choice to convince his brother to stay alive.

 

Kevin comes and stands at the other end of the table, a bit uncertainly, and Dean makes a vague gesture indicating for him to sit down. He does so, pulling a chair out slowly as it makes a low scraping noise on the hard floor. After he sits, he’s silent for a while, staring at the older hunter with a serious and world-weary expression that really has no place on a teenager’s face.

 

Dean puts his hand on the rim of the bottle, deliberating for a moment before quietly sliding the bottle over to the prophet. Kevin regards the whiskey bottle almost suspiciously and then finally picks it up and takes a sip, visibly cringing at the burn of the 80 proof alcohol. He takes a second to recover, but then tries again and this time he’s able to down more of the liquid with a little less difficulty. He pushes the bottle back to Dean’s awaiting hand.

 

It’s probably not the best idea to let someone who’s underage drink whiskey right from the bottle, and Dean knows that. Sam will most likely get all pissy if he finds out, and will tell Dean that he shouldn’t give him more than a few beers because _the last thing we need is an alcoholic prophet with the word of God._ But Dean also doesn’t really care, and he has a feeling Kevin could use a strong drink as much as he needs one. The cards haven’t exactly been stacked in the kid’s favor lately.

 

Kevin breaks the silence once more. “If Cas shows up, do you think he’ll know what to do? You think he’ll be able to help Sam? With everything else?” He avoids looking at Dean, and seems suddenly fascinated by the cover of the closest book, like he expects the question to upset Dean.

 

Dean freezes, the rim of the bottle of Jack stopped right in front of his mouth. He slumps. “Kid, I have no idea. None of us have a clue where to even begin. We can’t just sit around and count on Cas to come in and heal Sam then save the day.” He sets the bottle aside. “For all we know, Cas could have had a hand in causing this fiasco. If he is still alive and he make it here, we don’t even know what kind of state he’ll be in. Could be ‘Crazy Cas, the sequel’ for all I know. Right now, the only thing that’s gonna to help us is finding out what’s written on that hunk of rock in your room.” His words come out sounding harsher than he intended, but he doesn’t apologize. He’s tired, frustrated, worried, and about a billion other things that he’d never admit to.

 

Kevin frowns and hunches over slightly. “Right. I, um,” he fumbles. There’s more that he wants to say, Dean can tell, but for some reason he chooses to keep  his mouth shut. “I guess I should get back to work on that, huh? No time to waste.” He scoots his chair back and quickly rises to his feet.

 

Damn it all, Dean feels guilty, and he makes an effort to school his features into something a bit softer. “Kevin,” he calls, unable to keep the hint of exasperation out of his tone. “Look, uh...” He sighs and waves his hand in a helpless gesture. “Don’t worry about it right now, okay?” The words feel forced to him, but he does mean them. “We’ll do what we can for now. Everything  else, we’ll deal with it as it comes, alright? Just…get some sleep for now. You look like crap. The world hasn’t ended yet. The tablet can wait one more night.”

 

Dean watches as Kevin seems to consider what he said, judging whether he was serious or not. Finally, the kid nods slowly. “Alright, fine.” Kevin moves past him, and Dean angles his upper body to follow his movements. “You should sleep too,” he says. “Running yourself into the ground won’t solve anything. Sam will be okay for a few hours.” He hovers in the doorway for several seconds, and disappears from Dean’s sight.

 

Dean doesn’t try to respond, just lets the prophet make his way towards his room. That sounded like such a Sam thing to say, though he shouldn’t be surprised if his brother’s influence was affecting Kevin. Then again, Kevin was just a genuinely caring person, and he and Sam are probably the closest thing to family that he has left. Another small pang of guilt hits him, and with a shake of his head, he lets that train of thought vanish. He sits in the library’s chair for a long time, contemplating. Somewhere along the way, he drains the rest of the bottle’s contents and tosses it away. Eventually, he pulls himself to his feet with a grunt, stiff from sitting in the same position for hours. He turns out the light, checks on Sam one more time to make sure he’s still alive—he is, thankfully—and retreats to his room. When he closes the door, he finally thinks to check the time. A set of glaring, red numbers stare back at him and inform him that it’s a little past two thirty in the morning. Awesome.

 

The memory foam mattress that he’s so fond of isn’t as comfortable tonight, not with the weight of everything that the big douchey bastard in the sky (or wherever the hell He fucked off to) has let rain down on them recently. It takes him a couple of hours to give in to his exhaustion. In his half-asleep state, he can’t really be blamed if his thoughts drift to Cas, where he is, whether he’s okay, the works. The last thing he remembers is sending another quick prayer to the absent angel.

 

_I don’t know what happened, or what you did up there, but whatever it is… We’ll work it out, Cas. Just get your feathery butt back here, man. Please._

Dean finally stumbles out of his room precisely seventeen minutes after eleven in the morning (dammit, he did not want to sleep more than a few hours), intent on getting to the bunker’s kitchen for some coffee to stave off an annoying headache. To be fair, drinking half a bottle of whiskey before going to sleep probably didn’t help with the headache or getting up early. When he comes to the end of the hallway he sees that there are already lights on. Not only that, he can just barely make out the fresh, slightly bitter aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Since he’s pretty damn sure he didn’t leave anything on last night, he assumes Kevin must be up and about. At least that means he, ideally, won’t have to wait for the coffee to percolate. He rounds the corner and makes his way into the kitchen, and what he actually sees is different, and much more surprising.

 

Sam is sitting at the small, rectangular kitchen table, eyes glued to his laptop like the biggest nerd ever, with a mug of coffee waiting by his side. The younger Winchester looks up when he hears the elder brother enter the room, and he takes a sip out of the mug. “Morning, Dean,” he greets casually, gently placing the mug down and turning his attention back to the computer screen, as if everything were perfectly normal.

 

Dean’s first instinct is to run over and see if Sam is okay, and his second is to get angry. He settles for a mixture of both, though it takes him a few extra moments to react to anything. “The hell, Sam?” he says. “What are you doing out here? I mean, I’m glad, _really_ friggin’ glad you’re awake, but you need to get some more rest, man.” In an attempt to get his mammoth of a brother to move, he yanks the laptop back a foot or so, just out of Sam’s immediate reach, and closes the lid with a soft ‘click.’ “You almost _died_ , Sammy.” He stands to the side of Sam’s chair and gives him an expectant expression.

 

Sam rolls his eyes, and Dean can practically hear Sam telling himself to remain patient. Suddenly Sam pushes his chair back and stands up so that he’s fully facing Dean. “Dean,” he starts. He speaks in a calm, carefully controlled manner. “I’m fine. Really. I mean, yeah, I’m not at a hundred percent yet, but look.” He spreads his arms and then drops them back to his sides in a “look at me” kind of gesture. “I am getting better. I’m okay, Dean. Better than I’ve been in months.”

 

Dean narrows his eyes and carefully scrutinizes his brother. He has to admit, Sam may be right. He’s still a little pale, but overall he’s got a lot more color in his face than he has in quite a while, and he’s standing straight, without wobbling. He wouldn’t want Sam running any marathons, and certainly he’s still not ready to hunt, but his eyes are more alert than they have been in ages. He even looks better than he did last night. Reluctantly, Dean nods in acceptance. “Right,” he says after staring dumbly for a solid minute. “Right, okay.” One of the giant weights on his shoulder falls, and some of the tension leaves his body. Then he’s pulling his brother into a hug. Sam’s giant hands clap him twice on the back, and Dean returns the gesture before he lets go and steps back. That’s about as much emotional stuff as he can handle for now. “Right.”

 

It’s only after Sam sits back down and opens the computer back up that Dean realizes that he hasn’t done what he originally came in here to do, so he makes quick work of pouring himself a full mug of coffee and sits across from Sam at the metal table. He’s still not sure if he buys Sam’s quick and miraculous recovery, but Crowley is still in the dungeon and no demons or anything have showed up yet, so they’re alright for the moment. He watches Sam’s eyes move furiously across his computer screen, and whatever he’s reading must really be interesting.

 

Dean clears his throat. “So uh, what? One minute you’re dying and then, bam!” He makes a tiny exploding sign with his hands, for extra emphasis. “Suddenly you’re better?”

 

The corners of Sam’s mouth turn down slightly, though he does stop what he’s doing to meet Dean’s inquiring gaze. He shrugs. “I guess. I mean, what happened to me after I stopped the third trial…it must have been like a temporary side-effect of quitting the trials, or something. Maybe that was just the rest of that junk clearing itself out of my system, I don’t know. Maybe you only die if you go through with closing the gate.”

 

Dean inclines his head, and purses his lips. It makes sense, and if that were really the case, well, that would be awesome. He’s suspicious that even this one thing would go their way, because it never does. It’s perfectly reasonable to be hesitant. Aside from the fact that taking care of Sam has been drilled into his head all his life, to the point where he doesn’t know how to do anything else, worrying about Sam allowed him to stay focused on one thing and avoid certain thoughts. But since Sam says he’s getting better, and he looks like he’s really getting better, Dean decides to go along with it for now. “We’ll look into it. We’ll get Kevin to take another look at the demon tablet before he finishes cracking the angel tablet. In the meantime…” His voice takes on a slightly harder, more serious tone as he goes into protective brother mode. “You tell me if you start to feel any different, you hear me? And you’re not going to leave this bunker until I give you the clear, got it?”

 

Sam opens his mouth, looking like he wants to argue, then closes it. Thankfully, he just sighs and shifts the conversation to a different subject. “Right. So, anyway, we’ve got a lot of work to do. You said the angels….they fell? And that was….” He glances down at the screen quickly to check something. “That was almost three days ago?” Dean nods, and Sam carries on. He turns the computer around and Dean sees that Sam has been reading news reports about the angels. “News is calling it a ‘surprise meteor shower.’ Apparently NASA is baffled.”

 

Dean chuckles drily. “Yeah, I bet they are.” Leave it to Sam to go right into research-mode the second he can get out of bed.

 

“Well, obviously we know that’s not what happened at all.” Sam continues on pressing Dean for information.  “What have you got so far? Any information? Leads?”

 

“Big steamy pile of nothing,” Dean answers immediately. Before he even opened his mouth, he knew that Sam wouldn’t like the answer. He tries to amend it slightly. “Kevin hasn’t made any headway on the tablet front, and he’s probably still asleep now. Figure that’s probably our best hope, since whatever happened to the angels, it’s gotta be something written on that damn rock. I know Kevin managed to read a little of it. We know it sure as hell wasn’t trials to close Heaven, like, uh…” Taking a long drink of coffee to put off speaking seems like a good idea all of a sudden, so he does that. “Like Cas thought.” He coughs once and takes a drink from his coffee mug to clear the sudden block in his throat. He shouldn’t have brought up Cas in the first place, but by the time he realized where the sentence was going, he was already in too deep. And Sam has a right to know everything that they found out while he was locked in the church with Crowley.

 

“Nothing? Really, Dean?” Sam gives him a look that plainly says _are you serious_ , and he shakes his head in disbelief. “What have you been doing?” He doesn’t mention anything about Cas, and Dean’s kind of a little grateful. Deflecting questions from his persistent and curious brother is not something he wants to do.

 

“Hey!” Dean defends. “I’ve been looking after your ass, Sam.” He squares his shoulders. “Besides, I’ve looked through some books. But other than the few obvious choices, I got no idea where to start. I’m pretty sure the Men of Letters aren’t going to have anything on Heaven’s clearance sale. This is big, dude. There’s a lot going on.”

 

“Okay,” Sam concedes. “Sorry, you’re right. What about the hunter network? Have you heard anything from anyone else? Garth? Charlie?”

 

“Nope. Haven’t exactly been keeping up on the calls.” Dean plays with the now mostly-empty coffee mug in front of him, running his finger along the rim in a bored fashion while he waits for Sam to speak again. When Sam does speak, he sounds hesitant, like he thinks that Dean won’t like what he’s going to say next.

 

“Well…what about Cas?” He prods softly. “Have you heard from him?”

 

The tension that had evaporated earlier returned full force to Dean’s body, and he has to push the mug away to keep from breaking it. Immediately, his face becomes a stony mask. Of course Sam would want to know about Cas. “What about him?” he retorts. There’s an icy tone to his voice. “I swear, first Kevin and now you? Why do you keep asking me about Cas, huh?” Ignoring the fact, of course, that he himself kind of brought Cas up first. But Sam didn’t have to jump on the bait and roll with it. “What makes you think he’ll even show, if he’s still alive? Seems more likely to me that he’ll just pull another disappearing act, like he always does.”

 

If Sam notices the bitter bite to his voice, to his credit, he doesn’t say anything. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give up, either. “Do you think Cas could have fallen like the other angels did? We don’t know if they’re still even angels or not, do we? Do you think he’s…”

 

Human. “I don’t know,” Dean spits out. Some of the tension bleeds away again, though the anger remains. As much as he would deny it, he does think about it, and he does want to know what happened. The haunting image of Cas rocketing towards the Earth with his wings ablaze has been a recurring scene playing in Dean’s head. It’s not a pleasant image, and no matter what went down upstairs, he doesn’t like to think about something like that happening to Cas. He’d rather not dwell on it. “I think he might have had something to do with the falling dick bags,” he admits. “Last I saw of him, he went to heaven to find Metatron. Naomi told us Metatron was lying, but I don’t know if he believed her. Then he basically flew off and I came back to the church, and yeah. That’s it. Haven’t heard a thing from the son of a bitch since.” He makes a sweeping motion with his hand and rests his elbows on the table, slouching over minutely.

 

“As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter right now. Bigger fish to fry, right?” he says gruffly. _Don’t think about Cas. Don’t think about Cas. It’s not going to end well. You don’t have time to worry about him._ And maybe if he thinks it hard enough, he might actually accept it.

 

He studies Sam’s face. That blatant, unadorned worry practically leaking from his features tells him Sam is trying hard to keep going and push this conversation into one of his emotional talking sessions. Frankly, Dean has no idea what Sam is giving him that look for; Sam has always been smart and intuitive, but half the time it seems he’s way off the mark when it comes to Dean’s feelings. He must think he’s figured something out.

 

What he wouldn’t give for Sam to just let it go. No such luck.

 

Sam straightens and places his hands in front of him on the table. He leans forward slightly, going into logical lawyer mode. “Dean,” he tries, “don’t you think we should at least look for him?”

 

_No_ , Dean thinks. Because what if he _is_ dead, or what if he _is_ ignoring them for some reason? Or, alternatively, what if they do find him and he is okay? Is he just going to leave again? He’s never chose to stay in the past. Why would that suddenly change now? And he doesn’t think he’s ready to handle _any_ Cas-related outcome right now. He’s got Sam. That should be enough.

 

Instead, he shrugs stiffly and pointedly stares at the metallic gray of the kitchen counter. “Like I told Kevin. If he’s alive, he knows how to get here. He’ll either show up or he won’t. Besides, we don’t even know what he did.” He leaves the end of the sentence hanging, but Sam catches the unspoken part anyway. _What if he’s gone batshit again?_

 

“It’s _Cas_ , Dean.”

 

And fuck if that doesn’t remind him of the conversation he had with Sam not that long ago. _If anybody else, and I mean anybody, pulled that kind of crap, I would stab them in their neck on principle. Why should I give him a free pass?_

_Because it’s Cas._

“Drop it, Sam.” He sends his brother a glare. “You were the one who seemed to want to jump right into this heaven mess.”

Sam continues, undeterred, but clearly getting more frustrated with Dean’s unwillingness to budge. He shakes his head, leans closer and gives Dean a “no nonsense” look. “He’d probably be pretty helpful. Who knows? Maybe he knows how it happened or how to fix it. Maybe he knows where Metatron is! He might even be able to help us deal with Hell.” And then Dean can tell by the pleased look on his face that he’s about to bring out his winning argument, and he knows it. “Cas is our friend, Dean. And let’s face it, we don’t have many of those. We need all the help we can get.”

 

Dean sighs. It’s still way too early and he is _not_ ready to deal with this. He shoves his chair back and gets to his feet. “Fine. I’ll call around, and I’ll look into it, okay? Just don’t expect it to amount to anything. Dude’s probably dead or as good as.” As soon as the words have left his mouth, he turns and storms out of the room before Sam has the chance to say anything more.

 

\--

 

When Castiel finally reaches a small town after walking for who knows how long, he thinks things might start looking up. He’d blindly stumbled in the dark through a small wooded area, and gradually the woods and trees became sparser and sparser until he was mostly walking through fields and plains, with the occasional patch of trees. Other than that, the scenery, while very pretty, was mostly the same and nothing amazingly distinct, not that he’d been paying much attention. He had just been trying to keep putting one foot in front of another. When the sun was in the middle of the sky, he’d come across an old back road that led to a highway. Following the highway had eventually taken him to Pontiac, Illinois, where he currently stands. The old, weather-beaten sign cheerfully welcoming him seems more like it’s mocking him. It takes a moment to process it all, but the irony of the situation is not lost on him. Either this was a completely random coincidence, or Metatron has a sense of humor and thinks he’s funny. Or, for some reason or another, he thought it was a good idea to drop Castiel off in the home town of his vessel, Jimmy Novak. Different feelings that he’d been trying hard to quell spiral up to the surface once more, and he finds himself at a loss for how to react. He’s not even sure how he feels. Grateful that he at least landed in the United States, sure, but he’s also not nearly as close to the Winchesters as he was hoping, if his memory and distance estimations are still correct. There’s a twisting sensation in his gut, coupled with a pain in his chest that feels like someone is squeezing his heart. He recognizes anger and what he thinks is frustration, along with a slight burning behind his eyes. Regardless of what he feels like doing, he presses onwards into the town limits.

 

By now, the constant activity in his head had died down to some extent, though he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s adjusting to it or because he’s just numbed himself to everything. The hurricane is still there, along with a constant dull pressure, and it causes a sharp throb of protest from his temples every now and again. If he tries to hold onto a particular train of thought for too long or do any kind of deep introspection. But he’s somewhat more in-tune with his body now, he supposes.  For one, he can feel the heat of the summer bearing down on him. That, combined with a heavy feeling that he believes is exhaustion, is enough to make him feel like he has every single rock he’s passed while walking dragging behind him, gradually slowing him down more and more. Every once in a while his vision blurs slightly. A car honks at him, and he just barely moves out of the way in time, while the driver shouts unintelligible obscenities at him as he speeds by. Castiel never even realized he’d veered into the road, but the experience temporarily jolts him back into awareness. He coughs dryly. His body will probably require sustenance soon.

 

The second he sees a decent number of buildings and people, he makes it a goal to get his bearings straight. He won’t be any good if he doesn’t even know what day it is. Being in Pontiac holds the small possibility that someone will recognize Jimmy, and that’s not something he’s in a state to deal with. Not now that he can’t fly away to avoid troubling situations. The temperature is getting cooler, and the sun has nearly disappeared from the sky. That, and the lack of many people tell him that it’s nearly evening, which probably helps reduce that risk of being recognized.

 

Luckily, Castiel finds a gas station fairly quickly, situated on the edge of the town, and he makes his way over to it. Just as he’s weaving his way through the gas pumps to go inside, something catches his attention from the corner of his eye, and he changes course and heads around to the side of the small building instead. A wave of relief washes over him when he recognizes the object as a pay phone. Scrambling to search through his pockets reveals that he does have a little money tucked away, and he has enough change to use the phone. That means he can call Dean. He can at least find out if he and Sam are okay. He wastes no time in depositing the change into the machine, and then he’s lifting up the phone and bringing it to his ear, hearing the dial tone beep repeatedly in his ear, but it’s only when he reaches out to put in the number that he realizes he has a problem. The tiny hint of a smile disappears and is replaced by a furrowed brow and tightly down-turned lips, though he tries hard to fight the displeasure welling inside of him.

 

He doesn’t know Dean’s phone number. He doesn’t know Sam’s number, either. During the apocalypse, when he’d been forced to carry a phone to locate and communicate quickly with the Winchesters, Dean had programmed all relevant numbers into the phone for him. Castiel had never needed to be able to produce one of their numbers from memory, and after the apocalypse had been averted, he hadn’t needed to carry a phone at all. Now that he’s standing here, human, in front of a phone, he can’t bring to mind a single combination of number that would reach Dean, or Sam, or anyone who could put him in touch with the two hunters. He wracks his brain for something, anything, but all that produces is a splitting headache and he’s forced abort that effort.

 

Defeated, he slams the phone down hard enough that he hears and feels the plastic crack. He doesn’t care. A low groan pushes its way out of his mouth, and he slides down the dingy brick wall, where he proceeds to bring his legs up to his chest, wrap his arms around his them, and lay his forehead on his knees. One small little direction. That’s all he had. And now he may as well be right back in that field, because he doesn’t know what to do anymore. All he wants to do is give up. He won’t. There’s too much he has to do, but for now he allows himself this moment of helplessness.

 

Castiel sits there until the moon completely replaces the sun and the roaring engines of cars speeding down the road become less frequent.

 

Before leaving the gas station, he goes inside and looks at a newspaper. It’s been almost two days since the angels fell. No wonder he feels weak. Humans need food and water much more often than that. He’d barely felt the discomfort of hunger or thirst. In addition to finding out the date, he spends the money in his pocket and bought three bottles of water and an assortment of snacks, none of which look particularly appealing or familiar to him, but it was food. One of the bottles he drinks as soon as he leaves the store. The others will need to be rationed. He also purchases a road map at the last second. It will be useful if he plans on getting to Kansas. He feels another pang in his heart when he buys the items. He shouldn’t need them. They’re merely one more physical reminder of how far he’s fallen. The clerk had given him a strange look when he’d appeared, dirty and disheveled, with his armful of food and water. But otherwise, he thinks it could have gone worse.

 

He stands by the road, watching the occasional car or truck pass by, the quick but bright light from the headlights making him squint. Briefly, he considers hitchhiking, but the idea is quickly trashed. He needs to keep as low of a profile as possible. That means limiting human contact whenever it’s not absolutely necessarily. There are angels out there, he remembers. And they’re looking for him. They are angry with him. They have every right to be, but he can’t fix this if he’s dead. He needs to get to Dean, too. His human eyes won’t be able to see through the vessel and to the angel’s true form. Meaning there’s a great chance that he won’t be able to tell the difference between a human and an angel until he’s confronted. He can still barely make out his siblings on angel-radio, as Dean calls it, but it’s becoming quieter and quieter all the time, and the sound of their voices is becoming painful. Soon he won’t be able to hear them at all, and it won’t provide any warning whatsoever, if they’re conspiring to attack him or if they’re planning something else. The thought is a depressing one. Hearing his siblings is painful, and distracting, especially when they get particularly upset, and especially given everything else going on in his head, but it’s comforting too. It’s the last connection he has to his former self. But there’s nothing he can do.

 

The numb, disconnected feeling had returned before he even left Pontiac, but at the moment he finds it easier to focus like that, and he welcomes it.   _I was an angel_ , he reminds himself. For billions of years. He’s faced much worse. He should be able to handle this. Even the Winchesters, who have always been human, have successfully dealt with worse problems than he is facing now. He shuts out everything, the world around him and he even tries to block out his own thoughts, and just focuses as much as he can on getting to Dean.

 

It’s well into the very early hours of the morning when Castiel manages to decode another of the many voices and thoughts parading around in his mind. As it turns out, he can still hear prayers, though that too will fade along with the voices of his siblings, he’s sure. The simple realization, and the sound of Dean’s voice—no matter how faint and mildly garbled—echoing in his head is enough to overwhelm him and bring him to his knees, with a sharp gasp, by the side of the deserted highway. His fingers dig into the dirt and his eyes squeez shut in an effort to ward off the physical and mental pain. His face twists into an ugly grimace. The words echo over and over, and then it feels like everyone on the planet is screaming in his face. Again, the burning sensation appears behind his eyes, and this time he manages to recognize what it is. But he refuses to cry, and squeezes his eyes tighter against the tears that threaten to escape.

 

Instead, he lies there, curled into a ball as the crushing weight of hopelessness and so many other emotions threaten to consume him. It’s terrifying, even to someone like him. He can’t do anything. Even if he wanted to, he can’t make himself move. All he can do is let himself drown. He straddles the line between consciousness and unconsciousness, never fully aware and never fully out of it. In his periods of greater lucidity, he wonders how he’s even going to make it to Dean, much less how he’s going to help his brothers and sisters. He wonders how he’ll make anything right. He’s not an angel anymore. He’s just a human, with no clue what he’s doing.

 

_I’m sorry, Dean._

 

He lies there until after the sun rises, and the sound of cars zooming by eventually wakes him up enough to get him back to partial awareness. It takes him even longer before he can get up and move again.

 

As it turns out, when Castiel finds Dean it is by fortunate, random chance rather than any coordinated or planned effort on either of their parts.

 

\--

 

It feels good to be behind the wheel of his baby again, even though it’s been less than a week since he drove her. As much as he’s grown to love the home they’ve built in the bat-cave, nothing will ever compare to the feeling of being on the open road in his car. The past several days have been spent mostly by making sure Sam is okay, trying to help Kevin, and pouring through the Men of Letters’ library for any shred of useful information. So far, they’ve still got nadda, other than the little Kevin has managed to get from the tablet. Most of what they do know hasn’t been very helpful yet, either. They did, at least, discover that the angels are still in possession of their graces, but not their wings. Their graces are diminished though, so that’s something. But they only found that out when Dean happened to run into one while on a supply run.

 

It hadn’t been anything major that he couldn’t deal with on his own. He’d gone out to get some beer and food when he’d been ambushed in the parking lot by a disoriented angel wearing a tall and well-built businessman. The attack had taken him by surprise, but after getting knocked around a couple of times, he’d recovered enough to realize the angel wasn’t at full power and then it had basically been a simple stab and gank with an angel sword. The worst thing had been that he never got the pie.

 

They’ve decided to take the angel issue in stride. Since there are far too many angels to deal with at once, and they’re all spread out over the globe, they’ll treat them like any other monster. When they catch wind of any making trouble, they’ll go deal with them. Otherwise, the big fix will have to wait until they can read the tablet and find Metatron. Dean also decided to take smaller cases when he could, mostly to keep himself from going stir-crazy. He didn’t originally want to, but Sam practically forced him. But he admits that it’s helpful to get out and see how the world was reacting, and make sure nothing huge seemed to be cooking. As long as nothing warranting the second act of the Apocalypse happens (and it probably will), they should be okay for the moment.

 

Currently, he’s en route to some random town in northern Illinois to investigate what sounds like a vengeful spirit. He should be there in a few hours, and if he’s lucky he can figure out whose spirit it is and burn the bones by tonight, then head home in the morning. He’s trying to stick to simple cases that don’t involve driving more than a day. Sam still hasn’t been cleared for hunting duty, so Dean’s doing this one solo. He’s made Sam promise to check in frequently, though.

 

He’s driving down a tiny-ass road a couple hours over the border between Missouri and Illinois when he sees a flash of dirty tan moving in the opposite direction, and he’s hit with a strong feeling of deja-vu as the color drains from his face. He grips Baby’s wheel and he barely remembers to check that there’s nobody behind him before he’s stomping on the breaks. The impala screeches to a halt, and Dean winces, mentally apologizing to Baby. Then his eyes dart to the rear-view mirror and see the same tan shape slowly getting smaller. He twists around in seat to make one final check. He thinks he’s hallucinating, at first. Reliving a memory from almost a year ago. Because the world hates him too much for it to be anything other than a trick.

 

That doesn’t keep him from hitting the gas and pulling a u-turn so illegal and dangerous that the thought of it alone would probably kill all drivers-ed teachers and cops in a 50 mile radius.

 

In a matter of seconds, he’s pulled up on the opposite side of the road as the figure. Now that he can get a better look, he sees that it definitely is a man in a dirty, tan trench coat and a suit. It’s just like it was before, except this time the figure walks with a more slumped and defeated gait. He can tell that his driving antics have startled the man, because he’s stopped walking and he’s looking up and please, let him be- okay, yep.

 

Dean fumbles to get the car door open and practically falls. “Cas!” he calls. His eyes are wide, and he has his jaw clenched so tightly it actually starts to hurt.

 

Cas jerks, stops moving altogether, and fully stares back at Dean. His eyes are a little glazed and unfocused, and it’s not quite right, but Dean can see hints of the same, intense “look through your soul” stare that he’s come to associate with the angel over the years. Cas stares at Dean for so long that it becomes uncomfortable, and Dean wonders if he’s going to say anything at all. _Oh fuck, please let him know who I am, please don’t let him think I’m some random crazy guy. Please tell me he has his memory and it’s not Emmanuel all over again. What if it’s fucking Jimmy Novak or hell, a damn empty husk or something. Or, shit, what if I am going crazy and I’m just yelling at nothing?_

 

“Dean,” he croaks at last. It breaks Dean out of his mental mini-rant. His voice is rougher than usual, and he sounds genuinely shocked, like he never expected to see the hunter again. Like he’s expecting it to be a mere trick of the mind, just like Dean had thought at first. Maybe he hadn’t thought he would see Dean again. But it’s Cas. As long as it’s not a demon or shape shifter (and he should really check that, because that would be just his luck, wouldn’t it?), then it’s definitely Cas. It also breaks his heart a tiny bit, because just that one word sounds so fucking sad and lost and desperate, but also relieved. And even though they’re a road apart, Cas is looking at Dean like the sun is shining out of his ass, and that’s really all it takes.

 

The next second, after barely remembering to check for traffic, Dean is crossing over to get to his friend and as soon as he’s within arms’ reach he’s pulling Cas into a hug. “Cas,” he says, the name escaping in a thankful sigh without his consent. In that moment, he’s sure he’s grinning like an idiot (which he will deny later), but he can’t keep it off his face. At the start, the hug is really quite reminiscent to the one he gave his friend when they reunited in Purgatory, except for one major difference.

 

As soon as Dean’s arms touch the fabric of his coat, Cas becomes so still he does a great impersonation of a statue. Dean doesn’t even think he’s breathing. Then, he gives off a shuddering breath and, just like that, he goes absolutely boneless. He turns into a lump of goo and sags against Dean with all of his weight. Dean would be worried that the dude is actually going to fall over, and he tightens his grip out of instinct since Cas seems perfectly happy letting him bear all his weight, because _shit_ , he’s actually heavy for a little nerdy dude. For a second he thinks Cas is going to slide down anyway, but Cas’ arms move and he latches on to the back of Dean’s jacket, gripping it with so much force Dean will be surprised if the material doesn’t rip. The hug goes on longer than Dean’s internal hug-o-meter thinks is appropriate, and he’s just about to gently ease away and make a comment to dispel the emotional atmosphere. He also wants to ask a few questions, such as _where the_ hell _have you been_ or _why did you disappear and not even say anything_ or _why didn’t you come back sooner_ or anything like that. _What the hell did you think you were doing, you stupid bastard_ also seems like a good option. But then Cas speaks and Dean shuts his mouth and stops moving.

 

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas says again, voice full of raw emotion. He continues to hold onto Dean like it’s the only thing holding him up and keeping him grounded. Then he goes and burrows into the embrace, pressing his face into Dean’s shoulder, and that kind of tugs at Dean’s heart a little bit more. He hears a choked gasp wrench its way out of Cas’ throat, followed by another, quieter one, and another, and after he hears a muffled sniffle he realizes that Cas is crying. Like, actual, full-on crying. Sobbing, whatever you want to call it. Cas is crying. _Well, damn_. Whatever anger had been building up drains away, and any thoughts Dean had to push him away now fly right out the metaphorical window. He’s not that much of a dick. Still, he’s seriously out of his element here. He takes back his earlier thoughts. Sam should definitely be here. He’s always been better at this whole emotional, touchy-feely crap. That’s just not Dean’s department. Especially not when the person in need of comfort is in an adult male meat-suit and older than the fucking Earth. But it seems kind of shitty to just do nothing. And Cas may be kind of a dick, but he’s still his friend.

 

Eventually, he sucks it up and settles for saying nothing, but rubbing Castiel’s back a few times in what he hopes is a comforting gesture. Cas either appreciates it or doesn’t care enough to reject the motion. Cas just keeps crying, every once in a while making sounds that sound like they might be words, but Dean can’t understand him if they’re supposed to mean something. He thinks he might hear something that resembles “you found me,” as well as copious apologies for what must be everything that ever went wrong in the universe. Dean still doesn’t let go. He holds Cas and keeps hugging him, despite his internally screaming hug-o-meter and his suffering masculine pride, standing on the side of the road and surrounded by woods, while the impala waits less than fifteen feet away.

 

Dean has taken to counting the leaves on a nearby tree branch when he feels Cas’s hands release his jacket and drop back to his sides. Then he feels Cas squirm, so he slowly and hesitantly pulls his own arms back just in case the other man falls over. Cas sways dangerously and Dean grips Cas’ elbow to keep him from face-planting into the hard ground. Dean gives him a questioning look, holding him at arm’s length.

 

“Hello, Dean,” he says at least. The voice is mostly the same. Albeit it’s not nearly as powerful and confident sounding as before. Cas’ voice is even rougher than usual, like he just swallowed a load of rock salt, which Dean supposes is evidence of the guy’s epic crying fest on Dean’s shoulder. Despite that, those two words are another one of those traits that is just _so much like Cas_ and even though it’s also not quite right, Dean’s glad to hear it, all the same.

 

Then Cas isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s focused intently on the little rocks under their feet, but he does speak after taking a bit to compose himself. “I apologize. I…” He searches for something else to say, and Dean cuts him off with an awkward cough.

 

“Right. Uh, yeah. No worries, man.” He rubs at the back of his neck and takes in the scenery around them for a second time. “It’s good to see you. You uh, you okay?”

 

Cas stares at him again while he contemplates an answer. Dean takes the opportunity to get a closer look at Cas. The dude looks exhausted. He’s slumped over, and he looks more like a tired hobo than righteous, badass angel of the Lord. His clothes are dirty and the shoes look like they’ve seen better days. Dirt covers almost every inch of his skin, his hair looks greasy and messy and there’s at least five days’ worth of stubble on the lower half of his face that’s threatening to become a full-blown beard if nothing is done about it soon. It’s strange to see him looking so unkempt. He looks…diminished. There’s no other way Dean knows how to describe it. Other than the red-rimmed eyes and deflated aura, he does kind of look a lot like he did in Purgatory, so at least it’s not a completely new sight. At least this time he’s wearing the suit and tie rather than the white shirt and pants from the mental hospital, so he looks marginally more like the Cas that Dean has come to know. He notices that the tie looks like it’s about ready to fall off. He doesn’t know what compels him to do so, but before he can try and convince himself not to, he’s reaching out and expertly re-tying the dirty piece of blue cloth. That action seems to snap Cas out of whatever stupor he’d been in and he tilts his head, giving Dean a quizzical look that’s so Cas-like, despite his un-Cas-like appearance.

 

Dean shrugs. “Sorry, dude,” he offers lamely. That was a dumb idea. Smooth. He doesn’t even know why he did it. Cas’ suit is so rumpled and filthy that it’s not going to make a damn bit of difference if his tie is straight or not. He scrambles for a subject change. “Right, okay.” He claps Cas on the shoulder. “You wanna head back to the bunker?” Of course, he realizes that Cas may not want to come back to the bunker with him at all. To be fair, though, it doesn’t look like Cas has anywhere he’s planning to be. Regardless, he tries to amend his offer, because he’s going to feel like a real dumb-ass if Cas says no. “Or, you know, at least go somewhere that isn’t the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, Illinois?” He’s still afraid Cas is going to say no, but Cas lowers his head in an oddly compliant gesture, and allows Dean to lead him back where his baby has been patiently waiting. He’s not really sure about letting Cas walk too far on his own. The dude really looks like he’s about to collapse where he stands, so he sticks close to him and even goes out of his way to be extra nice by opening Baby’s passenger door for him.

 

After Cas is situated, he waits patiently while Dean goes around and gets into the driver seat. He sends Sam a quick text (“Change of plan. Heading back to bat-cave.”), because fuck the vengeful spirit. An amateur hunter could probably take care of the thing in their sleep, so there was really no need to waste a seasoned hunter’s time with it. He doesn’t know exactly why he conveniently chooses not to mention the fact that he found Cas. It’s kind of dumb. He still has a hard time accepting that what just happened was real, and that Cas is sitting next to him. He’s not sure it really is. But if he tells Sam about it, then that might somehow make it not real. It’s one thing to convince himself, but to admit it to Sam? Like he said, dumb. He starts the engine, ignores the phone’s beeping, indicating a response from Sam, and stars the seven or so hour drive back to Lebanon.

 

It’s not until after they’re moving again that Cas suddenly speaks up. “It’s gone.” It’s so out-of-the-blue that it takes a few seconds for Dean’s brain to catch up.

 

“What?”

 

“It’s gone,” Cas repeats patiently. He elaborates with a certain edge to his voice, like he’s honestly expecting Dean to pull over and toss him back to the side of the road at any minute. “My grace is gone. Metatron took it. I’m human.” The last word is said in a quieter tone, as if Cas is still having trouble accepting it.

 

Then it clicks that Cas never answered when Dean asked if he was okay, and this is his answer. He’s not surprised in the slightest. As soon as he saw Cas, he had a sneaking suspicion that he’d lost his subscription to Angel Daily. It was pretty obvious just from the way he looked, but somehow he has a feeling that might not be the best thing to say to him right now. Wisely, he chooses to keep quiet, and nods stiffly even though he knows Cas isn’t looking at him and won’t see the movement.

 

“I’m sorry,” Cas continues when Dean doesn’t say anything. He sounds so tired, so bland and drained. There’s no anger or even disappointment. There’s just apathy. Despite the issues he currently has with Cas, Dean does feel bad for him and he can’t _not_ say anything.

 

“It’s okay, Cas. We’ll…we’ll work it out.” Dean keeps his eyes firmly on the road, hoping that Cas will accept that answer, because he honestly doesn’t know what else to say. He wants to say _“it’s not your fault”_ or something like that, but he doesn’t actually know if that’s true or not.

  
Almost exactly a minute of blissful silence later, Cas speaks again. “How are you, Dean? And Sam? Is Sam okay?”

 

Damn. Well, there’s a question he could have done with having a warning about in advance. When he glances over at Cas, he sees that the ex-angel is looking at him with an unsure expression. It’s not an expression he can remember seeing on Cas very often. He sighs, and prepares to answer, deciding to be mostly honest. “Yeah, I’m good. Good as can be now, anyway. Sam is….he’s recovering. Quitting the trials knocked him for a loop, but whatever it was, he’s doing better.”

 

“Oh. I’m glad. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help.”

 

“It’s fine, Cas,” Dean says quickly. “Quit apologizing. Sam’s okay, and that’s what matters now.”

 

“Sorry.” Cas seems to realize he just did it again, because he makes several aborted efforts to say something else before Dean waves the slip-up off with a dismissive gesture.

 

And then, partially because he’s curious and wants to say something so they’re not just sitting there in tense silence and also because he really thinks he has a right to know, Dean asks, “What the hell happened to you, man?”

 

Cas appears to be somewhat caught off guard by the question, as if he didn’t expect Dean to care or want to know. He makes that face he always makes when he’s thinking hard about something, a kind of slight frown that looks way too serious to fit the question he’s answering. Then he takes in a breath. “Metatron took my grace.”

 

“Yeah, I got that.”

 

Cas seems reluctant to say more, but he presses on anyway, which is good because it means Dean may get an answer to his question without having to bug him. “There were no trials. It was…a spell. To force all the angels out of Heaven. Except for Metatron, of course. I…” Dean is almost tempted to pull over so that he can give Cas his full attention. Dean gets that this is probably not something Cas wants to talk about at all, so he feels like he should at least make sure Cas knows he’s listening. But on the other hand, they still have a long way to go until they’re back in Lebanon, and Dean would really like to get back there tonight. He settles for glancing over at him every now and again.

 

“He tricked me. I…I shouldn’t have, trusted him, Dean. My grace. It was the last piece. And then he sent me to Earth and I watched the rest of the angels fall. I don’t really know… I just walked after that. I found out I was near Pontiac, and I had no way to contact you or Sam, so I just started walking. I don’t know how long. And then you found me.” Cas starts fiddling with a loose thread on his coat, and it’s such a human action. Dean never thought he would see Cas being so fidgety.

 

But Dean can tell that Cas is starting to get worked up again, and he hurries to calm him down. Sure, Cas is his friend and all, but he’s also dealt with his quota of waterworks and emotional stuff for the day. He’d rather avoid that if at all possible. The current conversation is dangerously close to leading to another conversations that he’s also not prepared to have, and certainly not driving down the road in the middle of nowhere. “Don’t worry, okay? Like I said, we’ll work it out. We’ll fix this. We’ll find Metatron, gank the son of a bitch, and we’ll get your grace back.”

 

Cas makes a non-committal ‘hmmmm’ noise and turns his head to look out the window. He either gets that Dean doesn’t want to talk about this now, or he also doesn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe he thinks Dean is full of bull shit and is just choosing not to say anything about it. Whichever it is, Dean will take without complaint. He thinks Cas is done talking, but after a moment he says something else.

 

“Thank you, Dean.” He doesn’t turn to look at Dean, so his words are slightly harder to hear. “For everything. I mean it.”

 

Dean nods again, even though Cas still won’t see it, but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge it. Cas doesn’t say anything else, either, and he takes that as his cue to reach over and turn the radio on, and the sound of classic rocks music fills the car. Small miracles.

 

Dean’s just driven through what feels like the five hundredth field in two hours, when he looks over and realizes that his passenger appears to have fallen asleep, leaning heavily against the window. All things considered, it looks like the worst excuse for sleep Dean’s ever seen, and he’s ninety-nine percent sure that Cas is not going to be rested at all when he wakes up. Still, it’s sleep, and by the looks of him, it’s better than he must have gotten sleeping by the side of random roads or wherever he was. Hell, Dean wouldn’t be surprised if the ex-angel hadn’t slept at all yet. Since he doesn’t want to wake him up, he reluctantly turns the music off and resigns himself to a quiet drive. At least Cas is mostly asleep, so it’s better than the awkward silence that would no doubt ensue if he were awake.

 

Less than half an hour later, Cas jerks awake with the most pathetic sounding noise Dean has ever heard come from a grown man, perhaps with the exception of Sam. The noise Cas makes sounds like a cross between a pained whimper and a shout. He then proceeds to sit ramrod straight while he focuses on making his breathing sound like he didn’t just run a ten mile marathon barefooted on hot coals.

“You okay?” Dean asks after giving him a moment. Cas doesn’t seem to even acknowledge that he was spoken to, so Dean tries again. “Cas?” He speaks a little louder and more forcefully this time. “Hey! Whoa, earth to Cas!”

 

That does the trick. Cas sucks in a breath and jumps. “Fine,” he forces out. He’s still not entirely present, but at least he’s responding. “I’m fine.”

 

Cas looks anything _but_ fine, but Dean nods anyway. He thinks about asking Cas if he just had a nightmare, but he decides against it. It’s kind of obvious, anyway. As they approach the next decent-sized town, he suddenly remembers that Cas likely hasn’t eaten for at least a day, and if he’d been walking for a long time, he was probably hungry. And the guy hadn’t even said anything. That kind of makes Dean feel a little like a crappy friend. He could go for some food, himself and it’s getting late enough that he can justify it as an early dinner. He clears his throat.

 

“When did you last eat?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Cas responds. And fuck it all, because he even sounds guilty about not being able to answer Dean’s little question. “I…admit that I haven’t been able to keep track of the days very well. I mostly tried to focus myself to keep moving.”

 

“You think you could go for a burger?” Dean taps the steering wheel while he waits for a response.

 

“Yes,” he responds. Dean fights the urge to roll his eyes, because it sounds like more of a question than an answer. It’s probably the best he’s going to get, so he rolls with it.

 

“Great. We’ll stop somewhere in this town. If we’re lucky, they’ll have pie, too.” It’ll have to be to-go, Dean thinks as he pulls into a cheap looking, old diner. Classic Winchester road trip food. Bringing Cas into the place probably isn’t a good idea, given how dirty he is, so Dean tells him not to move and to wait in the car while he goes and gets food. Some part of him is afraid Cas is going to run off while he’s gone, but when he gets back to the car with two bags of food balanced expertly in his arms, Cas doesn’t even look like he’s moved an inch. He’s not sure if Cas took him literally, like he often did, or whether he just didn’t feel like moving. He dumps a bag of food into Cas’s lap, which makes him jump again, and gives him a simple “eat up” before digging into his own food.

 

As it turns out, Cas cannot go for a burger. He’s hardly halfway through one side of the Led Zeppelin tape that he’d put in before Cas is hanging out of the impala, puking his guts out on the side of the interstate while Dean watches his friend toss up mostly undigested food with a mildly disgusted look. That was a crisis very narrowly avoided. Cas had been about two seconds away from throwing up in Baby, until Dean expertly weaved his car through a lane of traffic to get to the curb in time.

 

“Dude, you are so lucky you didn’t get that in my car,” he tells Cas sternly when it seems like he’s finished. Cas just pulls himself back into the car, shuts the door, and curls up on the seat with an expression of abject misery.

 

Okay, so, no burgers, then. Dean offers to stop and get him something else, but unsurprisingly, Cas turns him down. He does dig out a bottle of water (possibly holy water) from a stash he and Sam keep in the impala for emergencies, and toss that to Cas, which he accepts. This time, he pulls over and makes Cas drink it, slowly, and safely outside the car. They sit there for close to fifteen minutes just so Dean can make sure Cas isn’t in danger of getting sick again. All in all, it wastes nearly an hour of their time, but Dean considers it worth it if it keeps him from having to hose out Baby’s interior at some run-down gas joint.

 

After that fiasco, Cas drops off to sleep again pretty quickly and this time he stays asleep until they make it back to the bunker. Dean is grateful for that. They make it back to the bunker shortly after ten o’clock at night. He pulls into the bunker’s garage. When he accidentally stumbled on it one day while exploring the many areas in the bunker, he had been so excited. Baby finally had a safe place to stay. He parks her, shuts off the engine, and nudges Cas awake, half-expecting him to shoot awake like he’s being attacked. He’s not disappointed. Cas comes back to reality fairly quickly this time. Dean proceeds to wordlessly lead the former angel out of the garage and to the bunker’s main room. Cas follows dutifully, but he’s not really taking anything in, just trailing behind Dean while keeping his eyes trained firmly to Dean’s back. He can tell because even now, he can feel the intense gaze bore into him, and it sends a prickling sensation down his spine. At least Cas hasn’t lost the creepy “stare through your soul” aspect of his personality yet.

 

Sam is, of course, waiting for them the moment they step into the room. He stands up when he hears them enter and immediately lets Dean have it.

 

“Dean, what the hell? You send me a text saying you’re bailing on the hunt but won’t say anything else and then ignore my calls? What are—”

 

Dean sees the exact moment when Sam’s eyes finally land on Cas. His mouth snaps closed and something like realization passes over his face, followed by an expression that looks annoyingly like the beginnings of Sam’s smug face. Dean doesn’t know what to make of that, so he pretends it didn’t happen.

 

“Cas!” Sam exclaims, eyes lighting up. “You’re okay.” He pulls the angel into a hug of his own and, of course, Cas becomes boneless again. Dean’s not sure he would, or is even capable of resisting anything at this point.

 

“Hello Sam,” he mutters wearily, still squished against the sasquatch’s chest. Cas hugs back, but Dean notes that it’s nothing like how Cas hugged him. There’s a little more hesitancy and uncertainty on Cas’ part, he doesn’t lean into Sam or cling to him for dear life, and the hug is over a whole lot quicker. In reality, it probably lasts five seconds, give or take a second, while Dean stood there holding Cas for minutes. Long enough that he was getting worried that Cas would somehow meld to him and they’d become one entity. Dean doesn’t know how he should feel about that either. He goes with trying to pretend that it also didn’t happen.

 

“It’s good to see you, Cas,” Sam says earnestly. “Dean thought we’d never see you again.” At that, Dean nearly rolls his eyes and tightens his jaw to keep from saying anything because, yeah, that’s _exactly_ what he wants to tell Cas right after bringing him to the bunker. “We thought you might be dead.”

 

Dean sees the way Cas’ eyes dart around the room nervously, resolutely refusing to meet Sam’s concerned gaze, and he sees the subtle clenching of his fists. “I…” Cas starts at last. “I am relieved that you are well, Sam.”

 

Sam seems to realize that the three of them are still standing in the middle of the bunker’s main room, and he makes a motion like he wants to sit down at the large table in the room’s center. “What happened to you?” he asks cautiously. His eyes flick up and down, taking in Cas’ rugged appearance.

 

Dean looks over and he can actually see Cas starting to shut down, bit by bit, and he may be mistaken, but he swears Cas looks a little dismayed at having to relay his experiences again. He’s feeling generous enough to help Cas out.

 

“Dude,” he scolds lightly. “I’m pretty sure Cas isn’t up for anything except a shower and sleep. I’ll give you the cliff notes version of what Cas told me later.” Not that Cas had told him all that much, either. He reaches out and tugs the ex-angel’s arm, and he obediently moves towards Dean.

  
“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” Sam amends. “Sorry Cas. I didn’t mean…”

 

Cas is as unresponsive as ever, and Dean’s really not that surprised. Sam moves out of the way, and Dean releases his hold on Cas’ arm. That’s just a bit too close to holding hands for his liking, which Dean most certainly does not do, especially not now because this is _Cas_. Instead, he chooses to place a hand between Cas’ shoulder blades and steer him out of the room and down the hallway towards the bathroom.

 

Once the two of them are enclosed in one of the bunker’s many well-furnished bathrooms, Dean stands around awkwardly while he tries to figure out what he’s doing. He turns away and starts placing some basic shower necessities he’d had the foresight to grab on the way here onto the sink, spending unnecessary time organizing them in order to buy himself a few minutes. He starts rambling in order to fill the silence. “The shower’s got great water pressure. You’ll love it Cas. Oh yeah, I guess you’ll probably need some clothes to wear since you can’t put what you’ve got back on. Uh, just leave your clothes by the door and I’ll find you something until you can get some more. Um…”

 

The rustle of fabric, followed by the sound of cloth falling onto the tile causes him to turn back around. Immediately, he regrets the decision. Later, he will vehemently deny the fact that stands there for a solid half a minute, mouth opening and closing repeatedly, gaping like a fucking fish.

 

“Jesus, Cas!” he manages at last.

 

Cas is standing there, half naked with his coat, suit jacket, tie, and shirt puddled around him in a muddy pile on the floor. He’s already halfway through with getting his pants off before Dean’s brain decides to stop short-circuiting and he intervenes. How did his clothes off so fast and— _holy fuck no thank you—_ this is far too close to that time with the bees for comfort.Dean strides over and hikes up Cas’ pants, too focused on trying to prevent another awkward situation to think about the potential intimacy of his action. He looks up, trying desperately hard to focus his eyes on Cas’ face, and sees Cas giving him that confused head tilt and squinty eyes.

 

“Dude, you can’t just drop your clothes like that,” he explains.

 

“Why not?” Cas asks gruffly. From the sound of his voice, he’s a little irritated, probably at messing up what he thinks should be an easy human activity. “You told me to remove my clothes.”

 

“Yeah, _after_ I leave the room, buddy! You don’t just get naked in front of someone else—especially not another dude—unless you have a, uh, a _connection,_ or…” He fumbles uselessly with his hands, as if gesturing will get the idea through to the new human. “Or, you’re having a, you know, a _moment_.” Just his freakin’ luck. This feels way too much like he’s giving Cas the goddamn birds and bees talk. Well, it’s not quite that bad, but Cas is a grown-ass man, and he and Cas most certainly don’t have that kind of connection. Like he said, Cas is a dude, and he’s not interested in dudes, and it would just be weird, because it’s Cas, and Cas is an old-ass angel-turned-human in the body of a man.

 

Ah hell, Cas looks like he’s going to question it further, and that is something Dean would rather avoid. “You just don’t, Cas. It doesn’t matter. Don’t over-analyze it.” The words come out a little harsh, but it quiets Cas. Right. Good. His eyes unwillingly trail over Cas’ body and examine him. He’s just checking for injuries and whatnot. He looks thinner than when he was an angel, but that’s probably to be expected if he’s been homeless this whole time, but he doesn’t look too bad. He does have a nice body. Dean cuts that train of thought off before it can go any further. “That reminds me,” he says absentmindedly as he tears his gaze away from Cas and returns to organizing the items, then goes over to stand by the shower. “I guess we’ll need to get you a tattoo, now that you’re, well, human.” And somehow it seems kind of shitty to point that out, but Cas doesn’t say anything.

 

Awesome. He clears his throat awkwardly. “Right. Shower. Uh, so. Have you ever done this before? You know, this way for cold, that way for hot, um. Shampoo’s here. To wash your hair. There’s soap too.” He continues to ramble on until Cas cuts him off, which takes Dean by surprise.

 

“I have been alive for eons, longer than you can possibly imagine, longer than you can _comprehend_. I was alive when the universe came into existence. I was alive when this planet was nothing more than molten rock being pelted mercilessly by asteroids. I am older than time. I watched humans evolve over millions of years, and I watched them develop their tools into the things you have today. I am not an angel any more, Dean, but I am not a helpless _child_ ,” he hisses venomously, cutting Dean off and whirling around to face him like he’s ready for a fight. “I can do this simple task.”

 

For a brief moment, Dean sees the unshakeable angel of the Lord that he met in that barn all those years ago. His posture straightens and his eyes light up with indignant fury. Dean can almost imagine that he’s fully clothed and tidy as ever, as well as the shadow of wings unfurling from his back. Dean is frozen, unsure of how to properly respond to this Castiel, while he stares with his brow furrowed and mouth open slightly. It doesn’t last. Within seconds, the fight drains out of the ex-angel. He goes quiet really quickly after that, but Dean still doesn’t know what to do, so he holds his hands up in a placating gesture.

 

“Right, well, I’ll leave you to it, then.” And he backs out of the bathroom and makes a bee line straight for the liquor stash because goddammit, he doesn’t want to—can’t deal with this, and after today he needs a fucking drink and nobody is going to stop him.

 

\--

 

It doesn’t take long for Dean to realize that something is wrong with Cas. Hell, even Sam and Kevin notice it. But, being as stubborn as he is, he refuses to actually do anything about it. Every time Sam nags him to “just go talk to Cas, for fuck’s sake Dean,” he retorts with the classic “he’s fine, he’ll tell one of us if he has a problem” line. It doesn’t get Sam off of his back for very long, and he always storms off muttering about what a big child Dean is being. But Dean is supposed to be pissed at Cas (he has a thousand and one reasons to be, and he’s been cleverly trying to avoid him since the day after he brought him back to the bunker). Besides, he doesn’t even think Cas would actually talk to him anyway, so he continues to dodge all responsibility.

 

Most of the time, Cas acts subdued and withdrawn, not at all like his behavior as an angel. When he’s not subdued, he can actually get pretty friggin’ emotional (which Dean is so not used to seeing yet, and he’s not sure he ever will be able to get over it, when Cas has always been so calm and poised). Dude has one hell of a temper.

 

Aside from the little outburst in the shower, one of the most recent times happened in the bunker’s library. Dean, Sam, and Kevin had been pouring over books (well, Kevin had been working on the tablet) when Cas wandered in. He’d come in so quietly that Dean had actually been startled when he looked up to see Cas staring curiously at him. Cas had looked kind of hurt, and Dean didn’t really understand why at the time. He supposes it must have looked like they were trying to exclude Cas from helping.

 

The incident had ended with Dean and Cas getting into a small shouting match about Cas’ usefulness and the damage he’d already done. It must have struck a nerve, because the next thing Dean knew, the book he was flipping through was yanked away so roughly that some of the pages ripped. The next second, it was being thrown at him, and he had to duck to avoid getting knocked out. He remembers hearing something smash behind him, along with the sound of way too many books falling to the floor, and Sam and Kevin’s collective noises of surprise. In that moment, Cas’ eyes had been full of fury, more bright looking than they’d been in days.

 

“I was an angel,” he’d snarled. His hand slammed down on the table in front of Dean. Dean would deny the fact that it made him jump until his dying day. “I can help. I’m not useless. I can help.” It’s a phrase Cas utters a lot now, and Dean wonders if Cas is just trying to convince himself.

  
As always, the fight always left him quickly. His posture deflated, and he’s fled before anyone could blink (though he slammed two doors on his way to wherever he went). It was a full day before anyone saw him again, and when he finally emerged he only vaguely remembered what happened. He still acted like a timid kitten and apologized profusely, however.

 

Dean’s still trying to convince himself it’s just because Cas is adjusting and he’ll get better on his own given enough time. Instinct tells him that’s not the case, but it hasn’t stopped him from pretending. Every time he tells that to Sam, his brother gives him one of those “really, Dean?” looks and launches into an explanation about how _even if he were just adjusting, Dean, he’s still going to need people to help him and you should really just talk to him and see if there’s something else going on or something you can do to help blah blah blah._

Not to mention, Dean feels like a dick because he’s actually secretly glad that Cas is human and can’t flutter off to fucking Timbuktu on a whim anymore. He’s afraid that Cas _wants_ to leave. Or if he doesn’t already want to, then Dean will say or do something to make him change his mind and fuck off for good. For all he knows, Cas could be in his room packing right now. At least this way, if he avoids Cas, he can pretend that Cas isn’t unhappy and quite possibly wanting to abandon them again.

 

Still, when he wakes up in the morning and finds Cas sitting at the table with Sam or Kevin, or both, with impressive bedhead and a half-asleep look on his face, wearing one of Dean’s old shirts and sweatpants, Dean can’t help but feel a slight tug at his lips and a certain lightness in his chest. As he does every time, he greets Sam and Kevin, and walks right past Cas to get his own cup of coffee. To be fair, Cas doesn’t say anything to him, either. He notices the mug Cas seems to have grown fond of, wrapped securely in his hands as if he’s trying to suck out all its warmth. It’s a hideous, God-awful  mug. It’s an ugly fucking green color and it’s got one of those tacky as hell patterns on it that make it look like it came from the back of a cheap gift shop that sells holiday-themed paraphernalia. It looks like it was made from a mix between the Christmas and summer sections. But Cas, for some unknown reason, has taken to it, and the sight of him sitting there drinking from it, looking as close to content as he has since becoming human (though he still looks far from actually being content), well, it’s a little bit endearing, if Dean’s honest.

 

But Dean’s not honest and so he pays it no mind, taking his coffee and quick breakfast elsewhere, ignoring—or just not seeing—the hurt look on Cas’ face.

 

\--

 

He hears voices when he closes his eyes. The pleasant hum of the voices of all his siblings, becoming an angry, high-pitched wail. Not just angels, but humans too. Humans from long ago and from much more recently. Demons and twisted souls, screaming from the pits of hell. Dean and Sam Winchester. He hears the Earth itself speak to him. He hears everything. He sees everything, things he’s not even supposed to see anymore.

 

He relives memories he’d thought had been buried, and memories he didn’t even remember. He remembers the first time he went to earth, the first time he killed another angel, the times Naomi carved into his mind. He sees humanity’s ancestors, and he remembers the feeling of fondness and pride as they learned how to make fire, how to make tools, cultivate crops. He sees the fading grace of thousands of angels, dead at his hand. He sees hell, and remembers the stench of sulfur, blood, and death. He still feels the phantom pain of hell-fire burning his wings. He sees the righteous man. He sees an empty heaven, and the sky alight with his siblings. He remembers Metatron.

 

And then he feels the crippling fear rapidly creeping up into his being, and that brings a torrent of other feelings crashing down on him, some of which he can identify. Others are totally unknown. The fear brings on the feeling of utter bone-numbing hopelessness and despair, followed by a frustration that boils into anger. All of these feelings mix with the background noise of everything else zipping around in his head, and it’s just too much, too overwhelming, and it creates a searing pain that shoves him back into the conscious realm.

 

He wakes feeling sick to his stomach. He’s learned to take deep breaths until the feeling subsides. Every time he tries to sleep, he wakes feeling more exhausted than before. He doesn’t know where he is, and this thoughts are so non-linear that they make no sense to him. All he can do is wait until his bearings return to him, however long that takes. His hands grip the soft sheets as he stares blankly in front of him. The room is too dark for him to make out much (that wouldn’t have been a problem beforehand), but he knows the walls are bare, and the only furnishings in the room are the bed, a chest for clothing, though everything he owns is borrowed, even the trench coat, and a desk with nothing but a lamp on it. He didn’t pick the lamp. It was already there. He knows that humans like to decorate their rooms, to make them more personal, but Castiel doesn’t care much. He doesn’t mind the room if it’s cold and barren. It’s how he feels most of the time now, so he supposes it’s already personal enough.

 

A sigh escapes his lips, and he does the very human gesture of burying his face in his hands and hunching over. He is confused. He remembers the feeling when he had been reunited with Dean. It had been a miracle. The sight of Dean made him feel like he was being ripped apart from the inside and, consumed by waves of guilt, he hadn’t been able to predict or control his reaction. But seeing Dean also made him feel happy. In fact, he felt it to such a great intensity that it was painful. Dean Winchester was a paradox, and apparently that had to extend to his feelings regarding the elder Winchester. This is hard. It’s so much harder to try and deal with these things now that he’s human. When he was an angel, it was easier to sort through his feelings, and prioritize when necessary. Now that he’s human? Everything just comes at him at once. Not for the first time, he finds himself thinking that, despite his love for humanity, he’s been grossly underestimating them for his entire span of existence.

 

Regardless, he doesn’t want to think about Dean Winchester. He doesn’t want to deal with the feelings that brings up, or the seemingly simple questions that he struggles to answers. Questions like _why is he avoiding me? What have I done wrong? What am I doing wrong? Do you want me to stay or leave?_

_Please tell me, Dean,_ he pleads to no one. _I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what you’re feeling. I can’t read you like I once could._

He doesn’t want to deal with this. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t know how.

 

\--

 

Sam attempts to mediate to the best of his ability, but even he has his limits. He’s found Cas sulking in the library, looking dead to the world, more times than he thinks is reasonable. He’s also found Dean taking his frustrations out on the shooting range so many times that he wonders how they still have any bullets left. The atmosphere in the bunker is tense, and both he and Kevin are tired of it.

 

“Dean,” he tries again, when he manages to corner Dean on his way to the shooting range. “You have got to talk to him. He’s going crazy. He thinks you hate him!”

 

He can see Dean close off, and try to escape. Fortunately, his larger size provides him with an advantage and he successfully blocks Dean’s escape.

 

“I don’t _have_ to do anything, Sam,” Dean growls. “Cas is the one with the stick up his holy ass, not me.”

 

And that’s how it goes, every single time. No matter what he says, Dean will not budge. There’s only so much Sam can do. His luck with Castiel isn’t any better. He finds Castiel in his room, with the lights turned off and his face hidden in his hands, as if his head hurts.

 

“Cas, you should talk to Dean,” he says gently.

 

He gets no response. Which isn’t surprising. It’s getting harder and harder to even get Cas to talk at all. He tries again. “Look, Cas, Dean doesn’t hate you. But you two have got to work through whatever crap you have between you.” He sighs. “He’ll listen to you, he will. You just have to try. He won’t be the first to say something, because he has the maturity of a five year old sometimes, but he needs to know that you want to make things right.”

 

Cas speaks, finally, and Sam strains to hear him, because he’s practically whispering and his voice is muffled by his hands.

 

“I don’t know what to do, Sam. This is…everything is…it’s overwhelming. I can’t help myself. I don’t know what to do for Dean. What am I supposed to do?”

 

Sam, for once, doesn’t have an answer.

 

\--

 

Everything goes to shit a week or so later. It happens out of nowhere, and later on Castiel won’t even remember exactly what happens.

 

He’s in the main room, trying to translate a book on the interpretations of heaven and hell, written in German. A lot of the information is incorrect, but it’s an interesting read, and it gives him something to do to keep his mind occupied. He’s trying to make corrections and notes as he goes, so that the book will be more useful to the Winchesters.

 

Dean walks in, and as usual, he walks right past Cas and sits at the opposite end of the table. Castiel doesn’t know what compels him to speak. Maybe it’s the way Castiel swears he sees Dean roll his eyes and he swears he hears a quiet scoff, but he can’t stand the silence and thinly veiled hostility anymore. He opens his mouth and what he ends up saying pours out before he can think about it.

 

“I need to help the angels. I can’t sit here forever.”

  
It’s the wrong thing to say. Dean reacts immediately, and suddenly he’s looking straight at Castiel for the first time in what feels like forever.

 

“You want to help? _You_ want to help?”

 

Castiel doesn’t like the implications of that remark, even though he knows that Dean is making a good point.

 

“I can’t let them suffer anymore because of me.” This time he can’t bring himself to look at Dean.

 

“Haven’t you ‘helped’ enough?”

 

Cas twitches in response, and he feels his fists clench without his permission. “Then what do you suggest I do?” he spits out after a moment. He realizes then that he’s risen to his feet at some point.

 

Dean closes the book he’d been flipping through and rises as well, turning to give Cas his full attention. He hums and makes a somewhat dismissive gesture with his hand. “What you should do, Cas, is let me and Sam handle the angels. You’re clearly not up for it, anyway. You won’t even be able to easily defend yourself against hordes of pissed off angels now.”

 

And suddenly Cas feels his heartbeat quicken, and a tremor runs through his body. _No no no no no._ He feels a new sense of urgency to prove his point to Dean. He can’t do that. He just can’t.

 

“Dean,” he says, and he only vaguely notices that his voices sounds rougher than it did a few moments ago. He stares into Dean’s eyes, and he can’t read much of anything from Dean’s stony expression. That realization frustrates him, and he starts to feel heated and energized. His eyes narrow, and he thinks his hands are full-on shaking now. “Try to understand. I’m doing my best. I’m trying. I’m trying to fix my mistakes. I don’t know what else to do.”

 

Then Dean’s face twists into an ugly snarl that makes Cas flinch back a little.

 

“If you want to leave, then leave, Cas. Nobody’s stopping you. Just disappear, like you always do. It’s what you do best, after all.” Dean is inching closer to Cas, and his voice raises with each word. “And hey, no reason to stick around here, right? Since you care about those dicks with wings more than anything else, apparently. The winged dicks who, by the way, want you dead on a general consensus, and don’t give a shit about you. Just go. But just don’t come back, if you do leave, alright? I’m tired of cleaning up your messes, Cas!” He slams his hand down on the table for extra emphasis.

 

Castiel’s thinks his vision whites out for a moment, because the next thing he knows, he’s slamming Dean against the nearest wall. There’s an angry buzzing in his head, and again he feels the beginnings of that prickling sensation behind his eyes. But he clenches his teeth and pushes the feeling back.

 

_Dean doesn’t understand_ , he thinks. _He doesn’t understand._ Dean doesn’t understand, and it’s confusing. Castiel feels like he wants to break something, but at the same time he just wants to curl up into a dark corner and scream. He wants to scream until Dean finally gets it. But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

 

Cas leans in close, so close that he can see the detail in Dean’s green eyes, and he could probably count all his freckles. Dean’s glaring at him, and Castiel’s certain his own expression is twisted into something equally vicious. He can feel Dean’s breath against his own face, puffing out in angry, hot breaths. He wants to lean in a little closer. He opens his mouth to speak.

 

“I don’t know what you want from me, Dean Winchester,” he hisses. His grip tightens, and he feels the leather press into his hands almost painfully. He has to take a moment to gather his thoughts, and he speaks slowly. “This is not easy. I’m doing my best. I realize that it will never be close to good enough, but it’s all I can do. I’m not an angel anymore, but I’m not helpless. You can’t expect me to sit here and do nothing! I want to-”

 

Dean’s unwavering glare causes him to cut himself off. Suddenly he feels uncertain. He doesn’t know what he wants. Or he knows, but he doesn’t know whether it’s something he can have. The fight drains out of his body, and he starts to feel a lot less confident. Dean is right. Of course he is. And how can he expect to do anything right when Dean won’t even support him. _Dean won’t even support him._ He feels every bit like an ant trying to carry a boulder, and solutions suddenly seem so far out of reach.

 

_I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fix this. I_ can’t fix _this!_ The urgent, panicked feeling returns, and his throat closes up.

The last thing he remembers is his fingers releasing the lapels of Dean’s jacket without his permission, and he’s sliding to the floor.

 

His vision goes dark.

 

“Cas? Cas! Cas?! _Sam!_ ”

 

\--

 

Cas won’t wake up. Dean’s tried everything, but nothing seems out of the ordinary. Dean checked him over. Sam checked him over. He can’t think of anything that could possibly be wrong, and neither can Sam. Cas looks healthy enough, all things considered. He just won’t fucking wake up. It’s been two goddamn days and Cas won’t open his eyes.

 

Dean runs his hands through his hair, tugging at it roughly and letting out a strangled growl. He’s pissed as hell, and he’s worried, and he doesn’t know whether Cas needs to go to the hospital, but they don’t have any insurance for Cas and he’s not really inclined to hand him over to a doctor if there’s something supernaturally wrong with him. He sighs and looks at his friend’s prone figure lying on his bed. _His bed._ He doesn’t know why he didn’t take Cas to his own room, but Dean’s room was closer and he hadn’t been thinking at the time. Sam said very little about Dean’s choice, though he did make a casual comment that it was probably a good idea for him to stay in one of their rooms so someone could keep an eye on him. Naturally, Sam didn’t offer to take Cas off his hands. Not that Dean would have let him anyway.

 

He shifts his position in the uncomfortable wooden chair he’s parked by the bed and looks Cas over once more. Despite what he tells Sam about not being worried, he’s damn terrified out of his mind. He’s afraid he’s done something and this is somehow all his fault, because everything he touches breaks. Everything and everyone that he loves is taken away from him eventually. It’s a lesson he should have learned a long time ago, back in Lawrence when he was four years old and his mom burned on the ceiling. If he’d never befriended Cas, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. That angel bitch, Hester or whatever her name was, was right. His very touch corrupts. And now, because of his that, he’s probably about to lose Cas too. Cas is going to leave him. Cas is going to leave him and there’s nothing he can do. Absolutely nothing. Tears prick at his eyes but he forces them back, because dammit, he’s not going to let himself cry. But he wants Cas to wake up. He wants him to wake up because he’s still pissed and he’s still not done giving Cas a piece of his mind, and he wants everything to go back to normal. He wants Cas to stay. The thought of Cas leaving scares him. It scares him more than anything, except for losing Sam, and now Kevin too. Cas is on the same level. Dean went and allowed himself to get close to the guy, and of course, this is what’s going to happen. Because nice things do not happen to Dean Winchester.

 

Sam enters the room, effectively breaking Dean out of his self-deprecating mental tirade. Sam’s been researching possible problems and solutions while Dean watches over Cas. He hadn’t even said anything, he’d just left Dean with Cas and had gone to the library to research. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. Cas watched over him for years. Now, the least Dean can do is reverse the roles, and watch over him for once.

 

“Get this,” he begins, using his trademark conversation starter. Dean spins around and does his best to make sure his face looks as blank as humanly possible.

 

“What’s up?” he asks, his voice rougher than he would like, but there’s nothing he can do.

 

Sam comes to stand beside him. “I think I may have an idea of what’s wrong, and how to help.”

 

Dean perks up instantly, but he tries to squash down the hope he can’t help but feel. “So what are we thinking?” he says instead. “Demon, angel, something else?”

 

Sam frowns, but shakes his head. “Sure, there must be something supernatural involved, to some extent. But it may be a bit more…well, normal.” Dean gives him a confused look that plainly says _get to the point_ , and Sam continues. “When Cas became human, I think it must overloaded him a bit. He’s got all these human emotions, and he probably doesn’t really know how to deal with that.”

 

Dean’s not following, and the look on his face states that obviously. “Dude, Cas had emotions as an angel. He wasn’t a fucking rock. Okay, well,” he corrects himself. “Okay, yeah, he kind of was a dick sometimes, but it’s not like he’s never felt a thing in his life up until now. ‘Too much heart was always Castiel’s problem,’ remember?”

 

To his credit, Sam remains patient, and just shakes his head. “Yeah, he felt stuff when he was an angel. But he was an angel. Imagine having almost entire identity stripped away from you, and then suddenly every human feeling under the sun is suddenly dumped on you and cranked up to eleven.”  


Oh. That kind of makes sense. “Humanity overload, huh?”

 

“Yeah. I think, as an angel, Cas had more control of himself, and he was used to being an angel. Now, on top of losing an important part of who he is, he’s also now got all these human problems, and human feelings that he can’t just mojo away to deal with later. There’s no filter now. His grace is gone. What he’s gone through, that would be overwhelming for anyone, Dean.”

 

“So what are you saying?” Dean really wishes Sam would just get to the point. Yes, this is important to know, but more importantly, how do they fix Cas?

 

“So. I mean, I don’t think it’s unheard of people kind of withdrawing into themselves when the real world goes down the crapper. It’s easier that way. Remember Fred Jones?” Dean nods, smiling a little at the memory, because Cas had been so excited to hunt with them. He’d been terrible at it initially, but by the end, he’d done really well, and helped out a ton. It had been a wacky ass case, though. “Right, so he was psychokinetic. Had special powers, right?” Sam gestures to Cas, lying still on the bed.

 

“I think, maybe Cas might be kind of the same. He doesn’t have psychic powers, as far as I know, but he was an angel. We don’t know if that leaves any lasting effects. Anna could still hear angels, and see demons, but Cas is a different case.”

 

“So wait.” Dean interrupts, because he thinks he knows where Sam is going with this. “You think Cas is doing this to himself? Like a self-induced coma?”

  
Sam shrugs. “Pretty much. It’s a theory, anyway. Best one I’ve got.”

 

It makes sense, but it still sounds a little bit out there to Dean. Mostly because Cas is too strong to succumb to something like that. But since he doesn’t have any alternative ideas, he’s willing to try just about anything. He figures he might as well go along with it. “Why would he do that, though?”

 

“Like I said. He’s confused, he’s overwhelmed, he’s not happy, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. Doesn’t help that you were being a dick and refusing to talk to him.” Dean opens his mouth to argue, but Sam cuts him off before he can try. “Don’t even give me that, Dean. I know you. I know you weren’t deliberately trying to be a dick, but that’s just what you do in these situations. You close off, shut everyone out before they have a chance to hurt you. Cas had no outlet, no one to help him, and so he had to deal with it himself, the best way he knew how. The only way he knew how. He closed himself off to, except he’s probably hiding in his own mind.”

 

“Hey, what the hell do you mean by ‘he had no one to talk to,’ Sam?” He glares half-heartedly at his brother. He does not like the direction this is going in. “It’s not all on me. You could have talked to him, too.”

 

“That’s the thing, I can’t. Kevin can’t. I tried. We tried. I can help to an extent, but he’s _your_ angel, Dean. He needs you.”

 

Okay, this conversation is quickly becoming uncomfortable. God, please don’t let this turn into a _feelings_ talk. He exhales sharply. “Fine,” he accepts. Sam’s right, it’s the best theory they have. And if he doesn’t accept, Sam will keep talking, and he does not want to deal with that. He doesn’t need to open that can of worms, now. “So, how do we fix him, then?”

 

“When we dealt with Fred, Cas took me inside his mind to wake him up that way.”

 

Dean snorts. “Oh. Great. Well, problem solved,” he snaps. “Let me just grab our spare angel so we can—oh wait! We don’t have one. Well, no biggie. Let’s just pray for one, Cas has lots of siblings. Oh, hey wait a freakin’ minute. They all want to kill him. Isn’t that peachy? Well, maybe there’s a chance not all of them do. Maybe if we get really lucky, one of the nice ones will show up. What could possibly go wrong?” he quips sarcastically. “I can’t just snap my fingers and get into his mind. How are we supposed to do that?” After he’s done, he slouches down in the chair as some of the fight drains out of him.

 

Sam is smiling, waiting for him to finish. That must mean he has a plan. “Well, I was thinking we might try African dreamroot.”

 

“If what you said is true, then Cas ain’t dreaming like a normal person.”

 

“He could be. Besides, he is asleep. At least, he appears to be. It could be that whatever kind of prison Cas has constructed for himself may be like a dream. It’s worth a try.”

 

It is worth a try. Dean’s lips twitch into a small smile. He is proud of Sam. His brother really is smart. “Alright,” he concedes. “Let’s go make some dreamroot and we’ll give it a shot. Surely the old Men of Letters have the ingredients lying around.”

 

An hour later, Dean is sitting on the edge of his bed, right next to Cas, holding a shot glass of the God awful dreamroot potion. Sam had insisted that Dean should do it himself. He said that he didn’t want to make it harder on Cas by putting two people into his head. And since Dean and Cas apparently had that whole “profound bond” thing going on, Sam deduced that it should be Dean. He thinks Dean has a better chance of reaching Cas. Dean isn’t necessarily sure about that, since Sam is better with emotional talks, but Sam wasn’t willing to argue. After some persuasion from his brother, Dean agrees to do it alone.

 

“It needs to be you,” Sam says. “You two need to work out your issues.”

 

Dean stares at the comatose body of his best friend. He doesn’t want to waste any more time. “I’m coming for you, you damn troublesome bastard.” And then he tilts the glass back and swallows the contents.

 

\--

 

 

Dean finds himself pulled away from the familiar décor of the bunker and suddenly he’s in a completely new place that’s dark and cold and is all kinds of unwelcoming. The whole experience feels a lot like being zapped around by an angel, and it takes a moment for him to get his “sea legs” and figure out where he is. He starts by pulling himself to his feet and taking in his surroundings.

 

He’s in Cas.

 

 

That brings up all kinds of _interesting_ images that, _wow, no thank you_ , Dean does not care to see. That is so not what he meant. Nice going, Winchester. Less than a minute in his best friend’s head and he’s already resorted to dick jokes. Classy.

 

He’s in Cas’ mind. That’s better. Well, dream mind, he guesses. Which still counts, since dreams are technically a product of…. Nope. Dean kills that thought. He is not going to stand about and think about stupid science things that he’s heard Sam talk about ten times too many. Anyway. It actually worked. Sam’s crazy theory about African dreamroot and fucking “profound bonds” actually worked. Well, damn. He’s not sure how to feel about this, honestly. If this works, he’ll find Cas, get him the fuck out of here, and they can go back to normal. He’ll also get a peek into Cas’ head, though it does feel a little wrong, like he’s snooping. But he’s never had access into the inner workings of Cas’ mind, and sometimes it would have been really fucking nice to know what the angel thought or was planning. More importantly, he needs to find Cas.

 

Right now, he’s in a completely dark area, like pitch-fucking-black “I literally can’t see a damn thing” dark. If he listens, he can hear an annoying buzzing sound coming from who the fuck knows where. He listens more closely, trying to identify what it is, but he can’t. It sounds almost like an angel’s true voice, but it’s not. It kind of sounds like a fuck ton of voices all mashed together, but he doesn’t know. Well, whatever, it’s creepy as fuck. The feeling of the room is even creepier; it feels full despite being totally empty and shapeless. It’s probably a very good idea to keep moving. Where, he doesn’t know, but Cas’ mind can’t just be some shitty black void. There has to be more. Besides, he hasn’t found Cas yet, and he has to be somewhere in here, right?

 

He takes a hesitant, first step. Since there’s no apparent ground, he’s kind of afraid that he’s just going to fall forever into nothingness if he moves. Fuck, that is so not a thought he wants to think. Planes are bad enough. Falling forever into a void is even worse. Fortunately, the non-existent ground, if it can be called that, holds him up and he takes another step. Good. Still not falling. That’s good. There’s nothing in every single direction, so he just walks forward, hoping he’ll end up somewhere.

 

It feels like he’s been walking forever, and he wonders how time works in the world of Cas’ head, or if it works at all. Wouldn’t that be great. His legs are getting tired even though he doesn’t think he suspects he’s not actually moving at all. Every once in a while, a gust of wind blows over him and causes him to shiver involuntarily. Sometimes the wind is accompanied by more creepy voices. He is getting tired of walking and not getting anywhere, so he opens his mouth on a whim. “Cas!” he calls. It’s not like he’s expecting anything. Certainly not for Cas to just pop up in front of him. But something does happen. A bright—really fucking bright—light comes into existence in front of him and then begins increasing in size and brightness. Dean shuts his eyes and brings his arm up to shield his face. To have his eyes burned out while he’s dream walking. That would be just what he needs.

 

Finally he feels the light disappear, and he cautiously opens his eyes. Immediately he’s assaulted with what feels like a really quick clip show of the most random things. The scenes change so fast he can’t even make sense of them, but he guesses they’re memories. He sees landscapes and people in all kinds of different styles of dress. Some of the images are so bright he has to shut his eyes for a second and try to fight off an incoming headache. It’s actually really overwhelming, and Dean wonders if Cas had to deal with constant flashbacks.

 

The assault stops as suddenly as it came, and Dean can finally focus on what’s laid out in front of him this time. The first thing he thinks of is the time he travelled the axis mundi in Heaven. It’s not a road like what he drove down, and it doesn’t look Heavenly at all, but it definitely looks like it goes somewhere. In fact, it’s a hallway of some kind. It does seem familiar though. It’s dark, depressing, and with dirty metals doors on both sides, stretching as far as the eye can see. It’s Hell. Or like Hell, anyway. It has the same atmosphere. All it’s missing are the cries of tormented souls and the smell of sulfur. But it’s silent. Still, he knows it’s a version of Hell. How he knows, he doesn’t know. But he trusts his gut. And that’s really kind of sad when he thinks about it. The fact that his ex-angel best friend’s mind resembles a kind of Hell? That’s a great thought. He tries one of the doors on a whim. Locked. Of course.

 

Still no Cas, so he walks down the eerily creepy hallway. Every once in a while, he feels a sort of tingling sensation when passing by a door, but every time the door remains locked. He grows frustrated very quickly.

 

“Come on, Cas, you son of a bitch!” he shouts. But it feels good to take his frustration out in some way. Nothing happens, and he tries softening his voice. “Where are you? I’m not good at this man, but I’m not just gonna leave you here, okay? So come out, unless you want me to stay here for the rest of my life!”

 

A door in front of him, to the right, bursts open and his hands immediately fly to his hips to grab his gun. There is no gun, and he curses, because really? He can’t even imagine up a gun for himself? Without a weapon, he braces himself for whatever shit is coming for him. But nothing comes, and he puts on a perplexed face. Alright then. He creeps up to the door and slowly peeks inside. Nothing. He steps inside, and _please don’t close please don’t close_ repeats as a mantra in his head. The door doesn’t close, but the minute he steps inside, the scenery changes again. Damn it, he’s getting really tired of this. This time, when he opens his eyes, what he sees is…different. And kind of unnerving.

 

He’s watching…himself. Rake leaves. He’s watching himself rake leaves, and for some reason he feels a sudden sense of longing, and confliction, like he’s a kid again and being forced to choose between Sam and John, and whichever one he doesn’t choose he can never have again. Finally the context floods in and he realizes that this is a memory. One of Cas’ memories of him. He doesn’t recognize it though.

 

Oh. This is when he lived with Lisa and Ben. He doesn’t remember Cas being there, though. The memory continues. Crowley appears next to him, asking for five minutes. Dean feels himself getting angry as Cas is swayed. Cas (he?) looks over at Dean, and the indecision fades, replaced by a heavy feeling of guilt. Dean gets a flashback (a memory within a memory, that’s way too much like _Inception_ for Dean’s taste) of Cas, lying at Raphael’s feet in heaven, with blood pouring out of his mouth, and a staggering sense of hopelessness yanks at him.

 

_“Everything that he sacrificed, and I was about to ask him for more.”_

 

_No!_ Dean wants to scream at Cas, as he realizes what happened. Cas came to him for help. But he chose not to. He tries to yell, though he knows it will do no good because this is a memory of the past, but he can’t talk. _You stupid son of a bitch! You should have asked me. I would have helped you! That’s what family is for, you jackass! You should have known this would end like hell for everyone!_

_“Where were you when I needed to hear it?”_  
  
“I was there. Where were you?”

_You were there_ , he thinks. _Why didn’t you ask me?_

Before he can get even angrier with the memory, he’s ripped out of it and thrown somewhere entirely different. He realizes he’s seeing another memory. He feels bad, like he’s snooping on something he has no right to see. This one is worse than the last. He immediately recognizes Purgatory, and assumes that he’s seeing through the eyes of Cas again.

 

_“I prayed to you, Cas. Every night!”_

_“I know.”_

 

Cas is curled up in a small cave, and somehow he just knows there are a thousand ugly monsters on the prowl for his head. Then he starts hearing a voice. It’s his own voice. He’s praying to Cas.

 

_“Cas? Where are you? Are you still alive? Please, just let me know you’re okay. Come find me. We’ll find a way out of here.”_

Another prayer, and Dean knows it’s a new night.

 

_“I found a way out, Cas. We’re going home, buddy. As soon as I find you, we’re getting out of here. There are a lot of monsters to plow through, so it may take some time. It’d be nice to have some of your angel mojo to help out.”_

This carries on for a long time, and Dean remembers each prayer. As he hears them, through Cas’ eyes, all he can think is _I can’t put him in danger. I have to stay away._ It’s a horrible feeling.

 

The scene changes again. This time Dean tries to be ready for it. What he’s not ready for, however, is to see himself lying dead on the ground. Hundreds and hundreds of times. Someone hands him an angel blade, and he’s suddenly staring at a new copy of himself. Then he’s fighting with that copy, aiming to kill. He feels pain, and reluctance, but every time his will wavers, there’s a forceful presence at his side, which spreads a deep fear through his body. Shortly after, there’s a numbness as he prepares to stab the blade into the copy.

 

“Cas, please, don’t do this,” the copy please with Cas. His blade drops. Then there’s someone getting upset with him, and he blacks out.

 

His vision returns and he’s in the same predicament. Finally, he plunges the blade into the copy. This happens a hundred more times, perhaps, and gradually he feels himself growing number and number, and the copies die faster. The biting, crippling pain lessens.

 

“No Cas, don’t, please.” The copy lies on the ground, begging for its life, and he stabs his angel blade into the thing that looks like Dean.

 

“No hesitation. Quick. Brutal.” Someone praises him, but he doesn’t feel anything.

 

The memory ends, and Dean is placed into another one. They pass quicker and quicker, but Dean still feels a torrent of emotion over each one. He’s figured out by now that he’s feeling what Cas felt, and it’s horribly depressing.

 

_“You have done this a thousand times, Castiel.”_

_“Bring me the tablet!”_

_“I won’t hurt Dean.”_

Another barrage of emotion floods through Dean, and he reels back. He relieves each moment as if he were him instead of Cas, and he feels everything.

 

_“Dean Winchester is saved.”_

_“And I did it, all of it, for you.”_

_“Dean, it’s not broken!”_

_“I’ll go with you.”_

_“I thought you said we were like family. Well I think that too.”_

_“We’re family. We need you. I need you.”_

_“What broke the connection?”_

_“I don’t know.” You._

After what feels like an eternity—a horribly depressing, emotionally draining eternity, Dean is violently torn away from the memory reel and is transported to a different place. He recognizes this place too. Purgatory. This time he knows what to do. Follow the stream. You’ll find your angel there. He hopes, anyway, and he takes off running.

 

There are no monsters in this version of Purgatory. Just the dim, colorless forest that expands for miles. And the stream. He’s getting closer. He has to be. He has to find Cas.

 

On the way, he tries to sort through what he experienced earlier. Those memories were all tailored specifically to him, and they must have had a meaning. They were very specific. Maybe Cas wanted to show him something. After all, this is Cas’ mind palace, he guesses. He thought that seeing all those memories again would make him angry, remind him of all the times Cas has betrayed them. But they don’t. And it’s confusing the hell out of him.

 

“Come on Cas, help me out here, buddy,” he mutters to himself. “I’m trying, I really am. You know I’m not good at this. I think I get it, though. I told you that I can’t read your mind, and you’re trying to show me your perspective, right?” He doesn’t get a response, and that doesn’t surprise him. He remembers feeling a peculiar emotion during the memory ordeal, and he’s trying to figure out what it means. Out of all the memories, he keeps flashing back to one of the last ones. _What broke the connection?_ _You._ Cas hadn’t said that aloud, but that’s what he’d been thinking. And what is that supposed to mean? Dean broke Naomi’s hold on Cas? That’s not right. It was the angel tablet. Right?

  
He reaches the place where Cas should be. He’d recognize it anywhere, except there’s no Cas. And if he were anyone else, Dean would feel like crying in frustration. He settles for something a little more violent. “ _God damn it!_ ” He kicks at a rock, sending it flying. It crashes into the water with a satisfying splash. Okay. Just think. There has to be something else. Like figuring out what Cas wants him to know. Sam should have been the one doing this. He’s far better at this kind of shit than Dean will ever be, but he has no choice. He’s basically running blind, but he needs to find Cas.

 

All he knows is that Cas is family. No matter what. He’s done bad stuff, but damn it to hell, Dean _wants_ him around, and he wishes he could do something to get that through Cas’ thick skull. He wants his stupid ass around. He wants Cas to miss all his references, so Dean has an excuse to show him Star Wars and all the other classics. He wants to show Cas the ropes of humanity, make him try all the best foods, show him all the best experiences. He wants to see that ridiculous head tilt, and he wants to laugh at Cas’ odd humor, and all the little things that make him _Cas._ He doesn’t care what Cas has done, and that surprises him. He’s carved out a special little place in Dean’s heart, and that scares him. Dean knows he’ll forgive him every time, _because he’s Cas._ No one but Sam has ever really had that privilege. And he wants him around. He wants whatever Cas will give him. He needs Cas. He…

 

He stops. The stream is gone, and so is the forest. He’s in a park now. It’s a really nice park, too. Quiet and peaceful. Probably would be a great place to get away for a while, or unwind. It’s beautiful and bright, and the air smells fresh and crisp, and some random guy is flying a kite off in the distance, but he doesn’t give a shit about the guy because there’s Cas, sitting on a stone bench, half-hidden by trees and shrubbery. He runs right by kite dude and doesn’t stop until he reaches Cas. He’s pretty sure his face is going to split in half from the idiotic grin he has on his face, but he doesn’t care. It’s Cas.

 

Cas looks up before Dean arrives. His eyes widen, and his mouth falls open slightly. His shoulders tense, as if he’s preparing to fight or flight. “Dean… You found me. Why are you here?” Cas has a strange look on his face, like he’s managing to be both surprised and yet not at all at the same time. Dean doesn’t question it for the moment.

 

“Cas!” Dean jerks Cas to his feet just so he can look him right in the eye. “Of course I found you. It was a damn pain in the ass, though. Don’t ever do that again, you bastard.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

Dean shakes his head. “You gonna make me say it?” Cas is silent, and Dean resists the urge to sigh. “I’m not taking a trip down Cas lane, Inception style, just for the scenery.” The reference flies right over Cas’ head, as he expected, but he continues anyway. “I came for you. I’m bringing you back to the land of the living. Don’t leave again, alright?”

 

Cas squints, and tilts his head. “I was under the impression that you didn’t want me. I didn’t know what to do.”

 

That kind of makes Dean a little angry because, _really_? Yeah, he’s not winning any awards for friend of the year, but he’s pretty sure he’s never said or done anything that would warrant Cas thinking that Dean didn’t want anything. On the contrary, he’s all but asked Cas to stay with him on several occasions. And Cas is smart enough to know better.

 

“I didn’t leave you on that road in Illinois, did I? I came here to wake your sorry ass up, didn’t I?” He bristles at the impending conversation, while Cas regards him with an unreadable look. “No Cas, you don’t get to do that. I’ve told you. You don’t get to just flutter off when you think you’ve made a mistake or things get too hard. Yeah, the situation sucks. But you pick yourself up and do what you can to keep going.”

 

Cas takes a step forward, until he’s breaching acceptable limits of personal space. “It was my choice,” he says evenly. “I didn’t have enough…balls, as you would say, to leave. But I didn’t want to stay and continue the same pattern of living as these past weeks. I didn’t want to do nothing. It was…overwhelming.”

 

Something about the way Cas says that, and the way his gaze drops and he shifts slightly—he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it—hits something in Dean, and his shoulders slump.

 

“Look,” Dean starts, mentally bracing himself for an emotional conversation. “I’m sorry, Cas. I’m sorry I was such an insensitive dick. I should have helped you. I’m sorry, man.”

 

“I’m sorry, too,” Cas says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. For everything.” And somehow Dean understands.

 

“I’m not saying I’m not pissed at you, because I am. And we’re going to have to have a talk later, even though I dread it. You can’t just go disappearing on me all the time without saying anything. You gotta talk to me, alright? I know you used to be an angel who could see into my head, but all I had of you was what you gave me to work with and, dude, that wasn’t much.” He’s gripping Cas’ shoulders, keeping him pinned in place. Cas looks stunned. So Dean keeps talking before he loses his nerve.

 

“We’re family, Cas. And I meant it when I said it. I meant it when I said we’d work it out. I _need_ you.” Somehow, he feels that maybe if he drops that word enough, Cas will get it through his thick skull. “That wasn’t a lie either. That means I _want_ you around, okay. I want you to stay. I’m not going to give up on you, got it? But you gotta tell me what you want from me. I…I need you, Cas. Okay?” It’s not exactly what he wanted to say, but it’s the best he can do. “You have to tell me what you want, Cas.”

 

Silence. Dean can practically see the metaphorical gears turning in the ex-angel’s head as he contemplates. Then, he speaks. “I understand.”

 

Cas takes a deep breath, and Dean sees his hands clench into fists. He suddenly feels nervous. “Dean... I…” His eyes dart to the ground, before he forces them back up. “I would…very much like to stay with you. And with Sam. But I want to help the angels, too, and I…” He falters for a moment, then continues on, in an almost unsure tone. “I want my grace back, if possible. And, most importantly…” His voice quietens again. “It’s a…peculiar feeling for me. I believe I have interpreted it correctly, however. I think I need you as well, Dean.”

 

Now Dean might die of happiness. He lets go of Cas, and offers him a hand. Cas takes it. He feels like a big girl, but he doesn’t care. “Let’s go, Cas. We’ll figure this out together.”

 

“Okay.”

 

\--

 

Dean opens his eyes to find bright blue eyes staring at him. Cas. A few seconds later, he discovers that he’s practically laying on top of the guy, because _someone_ didn’t bother to move him after the dreamroot knocked him out. But he ignores that for the moment, and presses his forehead to Cas’.

 

Cas smiles up at him, and it’s the first genuine smile he’s seen on the guy in a long time. “Hello, Dean.”

 

“Hey, Cas.”

 

And without thinking, _because they’re so fucking close and why the hell not_ , before he can convince himself not to, he presses his lips to Cas’. They’re chapped and dry, and Cas is inexperienced (he tries though). But it’s perfect. He pulls away, suddenly self-conscious that Sam is still around, but the big moose seems to have left them alone. He scrambles for something to say, feeling about a million times lighter, despite all the crap they have ahead of them to face.

 

“You watched me rake leaves,” he says finally. It’s lame, and not at all what Dean meant to say, (he was trying to prepare himself to rip Cas a new one) but oh well. Cas doesn’t mind, and the smile on his face widens. Dean absentmindedly runs his hand through Cas’ hair. It’s dirty again, but still soft.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Did you know I was there?” He asks, out of the blue, because he is curious. “I mean, could you sense me? Or some other weird voodoo mind shit?”

  
He gets a nod in response.

 

“Why didn’t you try and boot me out, or something?” He kind of wouldn’t have blamed the guy if he’d tried.

 

“I wanted to explain. There were things I wanted you to know, to realize. But I knew you needed to see and experience, rather than hearing it in words. That was a problem, that neither of us was willing to talk. I know talking it out isn’t the uh, ‘Winchester way.’ I felt a different approach was necessary. It was convenient, and I made the best of it.” He pauses, and looks at Dean with such a fucking sincere look that he can’t even be annoyed by it. It’s endearing. “In any case, I couldn’t kick you out. Not even from my own mind. I can’t push you away anymore, Dean.”

  
And Dean suddenly feels inadequate. He feels like he needs to say something more. Because this is the guy that’s given up so much for him, and damn it, Dean actually feels this certain _feeling_ that he’s never really felt before, and Cas is special, even though he’s an idiot. He needs to give him something more, and make sure that Cas really does know that he wants him to stay.

 

“Cas, I need you.” He fumbles. “I mean, that’s not. That’s not what I… I…you know…”

 

If possible, the smile on his face widens even more, and it’s really fucking sweet, actually. “It’s okay. I love you too, Dean. I always have.”

 

And that just makes Dean’s fucking lifetime. Metatron, the angels, Hell, everything be damned.

 

His lips meet Cas’ again. They can fix this. It’s not broken. And maybe, everything might be okay for once. Maybe not quite yet, but it’s getting there. They’ll deal with the bumpy road ahead, but for the moment Dean is happy where he is, and now he’s pretty sure Cas is too.

 

And that’s fucking awesome.


End file.
